Record of Lodoss War: Welcome to Lodoss Island Recommended

Publisher
Central Park Media
Writer
Rei Hyakuyashiki
Artist
Rei Hyakuyashiki
Country of origin
Japan
Year
2003

Record of Lodoss War : Welcome to Lodoss Island

By David Rasmussen
9th Mar 08

Are you a fan of Record of Lodoss War? Remember the Record of Lodoss War Anime? The Manga? The rare video games that seemingly only saw release in Japan (if they came out here I totally missed them)? Any of this ring a bell or spark interest in you?

If not don’t worry. Pick this up and you’ll have an entire Cliff’s Notes version of the Grey Witch trilogy without having to read through three volumes (though I do have all three thanks to a great member of BookMooch who traded them to me, thanks again!)! And this version is funny… yes, yes it is.

Welcome to Lodoss Island, Book One of the Record of Lodoss War parody… if there was a second one I have no idea about it. Wish I did though, should be interesting.
From CPM Manga (a group I’ve done reviews of occasionally in the past), Lodoss Island is the entire Grey Witch trilogy (from my understanding) in parody form, but it’s still the complete story so there’s a warning at the start that says this is filled of spoilers because of it’s content. Of course if you have no intention of becoming a fan of Lodoss War, or are already a fan and know the series by heart then it’s OK to check this out. Of course I bet you fall into the former most likely, so we’ll focus on you not wanting to continue past this and into the regular series (of course if you do decide to do that then more power to you, Lodoss War is one of the classics of Anime sword and sorcery so you should enjoy it.

Since the book is abit thin there’s no need to recap Grey Witch, especially since you’ll pick it up once you start reading, so let’s go into the humor.

Mostly laid out in a four panel strip format (which of course you would know from the classic ADVManga series Azumanga Daioh) it is a good read. The humor isn’t as graspable as Azumanga Daioh though, and some of the humor is… well… it’s way over grasping. Why? Because it’s word play at times (a person’s name or something sounding the same as something else), but don’t worry because according to this book at times the humor is supposed to have gone over the Japanese reader’s heads as well.

Overall the humor is good, artwork is done well (as well as the overall writing) and the read is nice. And again as long as you don’t mind “spoiling” the “real” story’s content by reading this then you’ll have fun with this one. A light read for your collection.
4 out of 5.

-- David Rasmussen 9th Mar 08