Review of The Heroic Legend of Arslan

tl;dr: A solid story of a prince’s growth but somewhat lacking in how it tells the story of everything surrounding that. This show is ultimately the story of a prince, Arslan, growing up into a king. The first episode is just to provide background on the world and some characters, after which there is a time skip of a few years to where the true story starts. This story starts off incredibly depressing, where there are multiple episodes of where everything that can go wrong going wrong terribly. It is under such circumstances that Arslan’s journey begins, though the depressing tone does vanish not too farin. Through his journey he gain various companions and meets various others, which leads to a string of conflicts. The purpose of these events are to show how Arslan reacts to different situations, and showing how he grows as a result of them. Arslan is faced with questions about what he wants to do and why he deserves to be a ruler. Without getting into spoiler territory, his claim to the throne isn’t as strong as other’s.

A result of all this, is that the reoccurring theme is that Arslan is fit to be a king more than the others because of how he’s different from normal royalty, mainly in that while like most that want to be king he has strong convictions, but unlike the others these convictions stem from compassion. He’s pretty naïve, but a straight forward, complex, and serious story about someone like him actually feels pretty rare these days, so I think it manages to land quite well and feels very optimistic. To a pretty large degree Arslan is pretty powerless, especially compared to those he’s competing with, but because of how he has strong convictions on doing what’s right and shows that he sticks to these convictions, he manages to gather others around him that do all the heavy lifting. This aspect felt kind of weak at times. It’s often the case that leaders aren’t front line fighters and lead from the background, but in this case he isn’t the tactician either and the plans and strategies are all devised by someone else as well. This is clearly done to show that a leader is something more than just the one coming up with strategy and tactics, but rather more of a figure that gathers and guides their followers at a higher level, but I don’t think that came across very well and to a pretty large degree it just felt like the tactician Narsus was deciding how the plot would go with Arslan just going with the flow. Still, in the end it did feel like the situations he got into allowed him to show that he was growing and in the end it is clear that he had grown to a pretty large degree which was satisfying.

While this is the story of the prince, it felt like this was the story of a lot more than just him, and in that it felt like the anime didn’t do as great a job. The conflict and everything around it felt like it was being portrayed in black and white with Arslan and his side as good and everyone else as the villains. But if you really think about it, or rather you don’t really have to think about it too long at all, it’s quite a bit more complicated than that. It’s much more a complex political struggle than anything. The conflict being portrayed is quite complex and is even shown as quite complex at times, but at the same time it feels like the viewer is forced into viewing it as something simple, which just feels kind of contradictory. Arslan’s story is satisfying but the story of the world and the character’s against him also felt incredibly interesting, and it felt like that story simply wasn’t told well enough.

Beyond that, the strategies and tactics themselves are pretty great. Narsus is clearly a very skilled tactician and watching him predict his opponents moves and respond to them well is quite satisfying. The action too is quite enjoyable to watch, though also very varied. The action involving mob character’s against each other is solely part of strategies and thus really exciting from the point of view of the strategies involved. The action involving key figures fighting each other is incredibly exciting because of how intense it gets. It’s basically just a bit beyond being grounded, and thus how it’s almost realistic but a little more than that makes it even more exciting. The action involving key figures against mob characters was crazy, in that it was pretty much a musou in that a single figure could take out armies, but at the same time this was shown in an almost grounded but slightly greater than that format and thus managed to be incredibly satisfying. As a random note, magic exists in this universe, but it’s presence is so rare and unneeded I question why it’s there in the first place. It may be building up to some major magical story element in the future that would be kind of ridiculous if it was the first presence of magic in the series, but as of yet it feels entirely pointless.

The art and design in this are solid enough for the most part. It feels like they did a good job at emulating the various cultures things are based on while still being pretty creative. The animation is also pretty decent. The main and very noticeable exception to that are large battles where there was a lot of pretty terrible CG used for soldiers. The first OP was good visually and had an amazing song. The first ED was okay visually and in terms of the song, as was the second OP. The second ED was decent in terms of visuals but had a pretty great song. The soundtrack has a lot of good tracks for the action oriented and intense moments that manage to sound very exciting and heroic.