"Frame" by Syo5

 Yeah, very few and sort of grungy pictures for this one. Reason: it's printed on a glossy paper that, for some reason, is very resistant to being photographed well; and, as you know, I'm vehemently against unbiding stuff. Weird, because the cover - and the cover only - is on matte paper... well, one more reason to actually check out the provided links, isn't it?

Frame is a short, full color, square format 2018 collection of works by illustrator / animatory syo5. Apparently, they're sort of a big deal, working mostly as a freelance artist for book covers, and as a director /animator for music videos. This last bit is actually unsurprising, as the illustrations collected in Frame have a cinematic quality, in the literal sense: we are often presented with a sequence of images, as if we were looking at still frames of an animation. Colors are rather somber in general, and the grain has a sort of faded quality, as if looking through a hazy glass -- a visual style you can see in their video works as well, see for example Minami's Ame Wo Matsu, for which Syo5 directed and animated. 

The dōjinshi is super short, 16 pages total, so one could argue there isn't much meat to it, considering that the collection lacks any sort of textual contextualization, from which I assume it to be a crop of personal works or practice pieces. Not the kind of stuff I usually enjoy - it's a bit too mainstream and polished for my taste - but, judging from their Twitter and Instagram following, I'd definitely in the minority. You might enjoy it! 

Record of Lodoss War - 9 DVD set

So, this month I took a break from dōjinshi purchases and invested instead into a long-coveted item: the 9 DVD boxset including the entirety of my favorite anime, Record of Lodoss War - both the OAV and the series proper. The two boxes set comes in its italian version from Yamato video, and it' fairly barebone, as it only contains two slim booklets and basically no extras on the DVDs themselves, but it's got what matters: the 13 episodes OAV, focusing on the adventures of heroic knight Parn and his elf buddy Deedlit; and the 27 episodes full-length series, narrating instead the adventures of young knight Spark as he sets out to save Lodoss from a grim fate...

... or so I used to remember. Rewatching in a binge both series actually made me realize how complex and bizantine the two series' approach is in adapting the source material, a series of seven novels by Ryo Mizuno (I reviewed them here). In my discussion of the novels I generalized, saying that the OAV adpated novels 1 and 3, skipping 2; and that the series adapted 4 and 6-7, skipping five.
In reality, the OAV surely adapts those two novels, but it tacks an ending (evil wizard Vagnard's attempt to corrupt Deedlit so that the goddess Kardis can be reborn) that is actually very similar to that of novel 7. The full-length series, on the other hand, cuts away a few subplots but basically adapts the books above in a rather linear way, also keeping the ending.

While the reason for this strange adaptation loop is anyone's guess, my idea is that, as it often happens with anime adaptations, the OAV was made with no plans for a full fleged series. Therefore, as book 3 leads into 4, but the OAV didn't have enough episodes to carry forward, they simply took the end of book 7, but with the characters of books 1 through 3. Then the series was made and, in order to avoid overlap with the OAV, it started off from volume 4 of the books.

The series themselves are, in general, as awesome as I remember them to be. The OAV is simply amazing, tightly plotted and boasting a rather good design and animation standard. A very unusual, low-key OP, and an amazingly fantasy-like ED - probably one of my favorites ever. The full series shows, of course, its larger budget in its very well animated OP and ED, but suffers of very common late-series fatigue: there is a jarring animation quality drop around the 20-25 episode mark (outsourced to a quick n' cheap Chinese studio?), and then pick up again for the last two episodes. There are also a couple of bizarre continuity errors - for example, body-jumping witch Karla is mentioned as possessing the body of thief Woodchuck, like in the novels; but then, suddenly and with no explanation, appears as a young woman...

Details, of course. The series is still awesome, that kind of epic, no-frills heroic high fantasy that they simply don't make anymore. Just like the novels, highly suggested for those wanting a trip down fantasy's memory lane. There are two more animated series set in the Lodoss universe: I distinctly remember Rune Knight being crap, but I'm actually a bit hazier on Legend of Crystania... might give it a shot.