Trivia / Record of Lodoss War

• Acting for Two: This happens a lot in the dub, to the point where in one scene late in the TV series, there are 4 characters in one scene and Crispin Freeman is voicing three of them.
• Adaptation First: An example at once prominent and yet swept over by the sheer weight and number of adaptations. The anglosphere (America most prominently) got the Lodoss OVA many, many years ahead of any other Lodoss media, and got the Chronicles of the Heroic Knight TV series not even a year after it released. The novels wouldn't see a release until 2017, and until 2021, a release of a complete collection of any of the Actual Play campaigns, in any form, seemed impossible. In these territories, Lodoss is thus thought of more as an animated property, and its tabletop RPG origins were generally not as well known for a long time.
• Approval of God: Mami Watanabe and Akinori Nagaoka, the respective screenwriter and director for the original OVA series, have gone on record to say that they liked Central Park Media's dub.
• Ascended Fan Fic: In a way. Record of Lodoss War beyond the Actual Play articles in Comptiq started out as, in a sense, Dungeons & Dragons fan fiction — Ryo Mizuno, who served as GM, did some Broad Strokes re-writing in the literary adaptation to make the story flow better for a general fiction audience, such as having the female elf character (Deedlit) fall in love with the male human Fighter (Parn), which didn't really happen in the AP sessions proper. In fact, there were three different serialized D&D campaigns (Parn's party, which ran from September 1986 to April 1987; Orson's party, June '87 to July '88; and Spark's party, September '87 to September '88) with the older game's heroes appearing as GMPCs in the later two campaigns. The adaptations tend to combine the Parn and Orson stories and feature only Spark's party coming later.
• Copiously Credited Creator: Besides being the ADR director and screenwriter for the OVA, the late Michael Alben served as the post-production supervisor as well as one of the lyricists.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • After Central Park Media went under, the anime versions went out of print in the US for more than a decade. Funimation finally rescued the OAV and series in 2017.
  • A number of somewhat unclear problems (albeit ones that are suspected to stem from the acquisition history of Dungeons & Dragons, among other things) has kept the original Actual Play articles from being formally reprinted in any way or format. As noted here, they were in real danger of becoming nigh-lost media until Parn's original campaign, at least, was fully assembled by dedicated fans and scanned, as well as translated and preserved on archive.org. There is a good chance this will be one of the only ways to ever preserve them.
• Late Export for You:
  • The novel series was first published in 1988, but the set wouldn't be available in English until Seven Seas Entertainment licensed them in 2018.
  • Even the OVA counts, somewhat. It was first released in Japan in 1990 and finished its run in '91, but it wasn't until 1995 that Central Park Media released even an English-subtitled version, and the English dub took 'til 1996 to materialize. Lodoss faced some criticism at the time in English circles for being "overly cliche", and, well, by that point, among a TTRPG crowd who'd faced 20 years of D&D and was in the middle of things like the Vampire: The Masquerade craze and more inventive D&D settings like Planescape, Spelljammer and Dark Sun, it's not hard to understand that perspective and how a more timely release might have been received better.
• Missing Episode: Rather infamously, the original Actual Play transcriptions very nearly became this. Comptiq's circulation when the Actual Play articles were first published wasn't amazing, and the most infamous part of this (in Japan, at least) by far was that all archival copies in the National Diet Library and elsewhere had been taken by overzealous fans by the time the modern Internet came to be. Thus, for decades Lodoss's origins were more myth than preserved fact. In 2021, though, a complete set of the original Comptiq magazines with Parn's party (that is, the first serialized run) was located, and were fully preserved in both Japanese... and, for the first time, in English!
• The Other Darrin: The entire Japanese voice cast from the OAV was changed for the TV series. Weirdly, Show Hayami was darrin'ed and became a Darrin at the same time: he played Orson in the OAV, then handed the role to Nobuyuki Hiyama and replaced Akira Kamiya as Ashram. Also, Deedlit was darrin'ed again for the last 6 episodes of the TV series after her then-voice actress Shiho Niiyama was diagnosed with leukemia, so Junko Noda replaced her for her final appearances.
• Real-Life Relative: In the OVAs, Sakiko Tamagawa voiced Pirotess and her then-future husband Shūichi Ikeda voiced Kashue.
• Star-Making Role: Lodoss War was one of the very first anime dubs recorded in New York City, and is where now-popular voice actors Lisa Ortiz and Ted Lewis made their debuts.
• Troubled Production: The English dub for the Chronicles of the Heroic Knight series. While the original OVA dub was a decent (if unspectacular) effort for 1996, the TV dub, despite receiving a favorable mark from Mike Toole, has otherwise has been less well received. This was because Central Park Media employed Irvington, New York-based recording studio, Headline Sound, to dub the series, as the first studio responsible for the OVA dub, National Sound, was closed down. The Headline team, despite sharing some of the same cast members as the dub, was less experienced in dubbing anime. (Joe DiGiorgi, the owner of Headline Studios, stated it was a learning experience for him.) There were also cases of actors dropping in and out of roles for select episodes because of conflicting schedules. Infamously, Lisa Ortiz's Deedlit was replaced for about two episodes — because the actress was sick and out of town. Due to tight schedules, a replacement had to be brought in at the last moment. At one point Wagnard's original English VA from the OVA reprises his role for one TV episode, but is otherwise voiced by another actor. Garrack's voice actor was changed to Crispin Freeman about midway through. Ryna, Karla, and Pirotess also had different voice actresses for THREE episodes. Leylia even had THREE — count 'em, THREE — actresses; the original, Simone Grant, only voices her in the beginning episodes. Despite ADR director Michael Alben's best intentions, some of the newer cast members also lacked experience. For Headline, Chronicles of the Heroic Knight was a learning experience, and many of their dubs, starting with His and Her Circumstances were uphill afterward.
• Two Voices, One Character: Shiho Niiyama was the primary voice for Deedlit in Chronicles of the Heroic Knight. However, when Niiyama was too sick to record the final episodes, Junko Noda was selected to take her place.
• You Sound Familiar: Show Hayami played Orson in the OVA and would later go on to replace Akira Kamiya as Ashram for Chronicles of the Heroic Knight.

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