Record of Lodoss War: The Grey Witch Book 1 1997 CPM Press   Buy It Now

The Record of Lodoss War is a manga steeped in back story. Each line reminds us of past battles, friends lost and epic standoffs. Thoughts drift back to the good old days with allies. The only sad thing is that I don’t remember any of that. In fact this is my first experience with anything from the Lodoss war franchise. I remember hearing about it being on cartoon network, back when Toonami was on at midnight, also known as the time before man. There is a lot of history and back story to this series but with out knowing that I don’t think that I can’t fully appreciate this manga. I know that half the lines referred to things that happened in the past, just from the way that they were written. I knew that the characters had past relationships from or at least knew of each other. How did they know each other? What was it? Why did they leave each other in the past? I don’t know, it was pretty much inferred that I had watched all the anime series before reading this manga, and I don’t know if I liked it.

The art style is heavy on the ink and line hatching. Sometimes white is used to highlight characters because there is so little of it. While glancing over the pages it may look muddled, in some panels there is so much ink it’s hard to tell characters apart from the background, but a closer inspection reveals amazing ink work. The hatching, done to indicate shadows, with ink is a tricky art to master, and you can’t find anyone with a better grip than here. In fact while I was in art class it was the hardest thing for me to master. It may take a little bit to get use to but the almost too dark pages show much more to the inquisitive eye. Detail is abound in each panel. I came into this with the notion that detail is like pure black. Too much detail and your comic is all black. But after this book I can see that if done well lots of detail looks good.

The story line is good, quite epic in fact, but I kept feeling like I was only getting half of it. Not knowing the back story really stopped me from taking it all in. it was like having your friends tell an inside joke that you weren’t a part of. You kind of chuckle along with them, but don’t really get it. If I was down with Lodoss war from the beginning, I am positive that I would be all over this manga. I can see people looking for change in their couch, and harassing friends to loan them money to get the next volume, but sadly I just couldn’t get that deep into it.

While not a good jumping in point, still worth a read. Sadly I do have to say, only fan boys need apply.

-nick-