Adaptation Distillation: Made for TV after the failure of Ralph Bashki's The Lord of the Rings (Animated) by a completely different studio. It attempts to adapt the work, with no reference to the previous two titles, which results in a very disjointed effort. But individual scenes like Eowyn's confrontation with the Witch King are adapted almost word for word from the book.
At the end of the piece, Gandalf asserts that the Hobbits will grow taller with each generation and merge with the race of Men. This is not a Tolkien-derived idea, but purely from the scriptwriter.
Always Chaotic Evil: Averted. The cartoon goes where even the books didn't and actually humanizes the orcs to a degree. The song, "Where There's A Whip, There's A Way" basically says that they fight because they're being made to, not because they want to. This suggests that only the higher-ranking orc officers are truly malicious and evil.
The original books do make the same point, that smaller breeds of orcs are driven to war by force as slave soldiers. However, this doesn't mean that they aren't evil, just that they are cowardly and sneaky by nature, and prefer ambushes over open battle.
Animesque: Virtually all the animators and one of the two character designers were Japanese, so this may actually be more half-Anime than pseudo-Anime Animesque.
Badass: Samwise, so much. And he manages it without losing anything of himself in the development.
Behind the Black: Hilariously, no one notices the Minstrel of Gondor until Gandalf introduces him. Apparently he was just standing there silently during the entire party waiting for a cue.
Big Damn Heroes: Couple of instances, most notable being when the Rohan army arrives, naturally, at the single most dramatically appropriate moment to save the day. Aragorn's arrival is actually more badass in this version, since it looks like he routes the evil army just by showing up.
Big "NO!": By Sam, a couple of times. In fact, maybe only by Sam. Nearly every other character says "Nay" rather than "No".
Broad Strokes: The dialogue is surprisingly accurate, though.
Camp: (cue disco beat) Where there's a whip * WHIPCRACK* there's a way. Where there's a whip * WHIPCRACK* there's a way.
Continuity Lockout: You had better know the basic story and major characters, or this makes no damn sense.
Covers Always Lie: The DVD cover◊ only seems to vaguely represent the film's contents, if it indeed represents them at all. It features two generic chubby hobbits, neither of which look quite like Samwise or Merry, let alone Frodo or Pippin. They are riding on a horse, despite the fact that there is no scene featuring hobbits riding horses (only significantly smaller ponies). Also prominently featured are two dwarves who do not appear in the film at all, and do not clearly resemble any of the dwarves who appeared in The Hobbit either (although one looks vaguely like Thorin and another like Óin in the wrong outfit). In the background are two vaguely-portrayed palace-like structures — one light and one dark — that do not clearly resemble Minas Tirith, Cirith Ungol, Barad-dûr or the Black Gate which appear in the film. All in all, the cover looks like it was drawn by someone who really hasn't seen the film or read the books at all but merely slapped something random together with short people, dwarves, knights, castles and a dragon, which makes you wonder if the powers that be who signed off on this DVD release simply didn't care.
Actually, in reference to the bit about the dwarves, a closer look reveals that Grumpy decided to show up for the party!
Demoted to Extra: Legolas and Gimli do appear very briefly in a few scenes one being in Aragon's flashback, a few shots during the battle scenes, and can be seen during the parade, neither of them have any lines. For that matter, Aragorn has less than a dozen spoken lines either, and he's the title character.
Faramir also appears right at the end with no explanation.
Evolutionary Retcon: Aside from the Stock Footage of Thranduil from The Hobbit, the appearance of the Elves has been revised to have them looking much more like humans (as one can tell from Legolas' few appearances).
Hey, It's That Voice!: This has Roddy McDowall ("Oi! Blimey Mistah Freodo!") as Samwise, Casey Kasem (Shaggy Rogers) as Pippin, Orson Bean as Frodo & Bilbo, folk singer Glenn Yarbrough as The Minstrel of Gondor, and Don Messick (Papa Smurf) as King Théoden.
Not to mention that Gandalf is John Huston (the Lawgiver, as well as a very good director), and Denethor is William Conrad of Cannon, Jake And The Fatman, and refrigerator alarm fame.
And then there's the guard at Minas Tirith who denies Pippin entry to Denethor's chamber. "His Word is Law!", says John Stephenson in his unmistakable Hanna-BarberaSaturday Morning Cartoon voice. And you can also thank him for making the Witch King of Angmar sound like your typical Scooby-Doo villain.
The Final Temptation: Sam is tempted to claim the ring, lead an army to claim the Dark Tower for his own, and turn Mordor into a vast garden paradise.**
Frodo's confrontation in the Cracks of Doom is drawn out, stretching and deforming the timeline quite a bit, since he apparently claims the ring and wanders around Mount Doom for quite awhile while the story proceeds. Oddly, it's portrayed as a disaster if Sam should put on the ring in sight of Mount Doom (as in the book) but Frodo can do so and all that happens is the quest gets derailed with Sam wandering around the inside of the volcano looking for him!
A bittersweet Lyrical Dissonance ballad, "It's So Easy Not to Try", whose music is actually a rearranged version of "Roads" from The Hobbit animation that came before. The Return of the King animation gives it some additional new lyrics, ups its Tear Jerker effect, and makes the song the film's main and closing theme. It's the only song that features in both animated films, but becomes more notable in the latter.
A few of the old-style goblins are mixed in, suggesting this is simply a more diverse force.
Paper-Thin Disguise: Sam and Frodo are half the size of orcs, have radically different skin tones, hair tones, and facial structures, lack horns, fangs, and cat-like eyes, and have their hairy hobbit feet plainly visible, but if they're wearing orc armor it's convincing enough for the slavedriver.
Of course, it's possible that considering how varied the real orcs are in this version, he might have just thought they were scrawny.
Talking to Himself: Orson Bean as both Frodo and Bilbo, also the scene where the orc commander argues with the captain of the Rangers both voiced by Don Messick.
Wingding Eyes: Frodo's animesque eyes (even larger than Elijah Wood's) go from Chibi to Nightmare Fuel when he wields the Power of The Ring, causing him to appear tall and brightly lit, Saiyan-style, and the pupils of his eyes become flames! This is a slight exaggeration from the book, where Frodo does indeed appear to grow into a powerful figure (like Galadriel and Gandalf in the live action films) when asserting control over Gollum.
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