The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel – Northern War First Impressions

“Back when this country teetered on the brink of destruction, the heroes of the revolution saved us, but what did they accomplish after that? What did they leave for future generations?”

Oh dear. This is unfortunate. There aren’t a horde of shows I was specifically looking forward to this season, but The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel – Northern War was definitely on my radar. Sure, it’s a video game adaptation, but anime has generally had better luck with those than the West, right? Well, regrettably that statement comes with a colossal asterisk that I forgot to account for. Unfortunately, The Legend of Heroes, despite the strengths of its source material and the theoretical ease of adaptation, is not one of these success stories. By blending bad production values, terrible editing, clunky writing and incomprehensible storytelling, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel – Northern War has set itself up to be the type of adaptation that unifies both fans and non-fans in their disgust. I am shocked that an adaptation linked to this franchise could fail so spectacularly.

The Legend of Heroes, despite its generic title, is a beloved franchise in both Japan and abroad. I’ve only played Trails of Cold Steel (technically the 7th game in the Trails series, but a good stepping on point) and a bit of Trails of Cold Steel II, so my ties to the franchise are a bit light. Regardless, I’m at least familiar with various narrative elements at play. In theory, knowledge of the world shouldn’t be necessary, but in practice the show throws in so many nods to people and places that it becomes annoying whether you get the reference or not. Our primary lead is Lavi, a talented Jaeger (i.e. mercenary) who’s an anime original character. She actually spends more than a third of this episode with her face mostly hidden by her helmet, and I’m not sure why. She’s small, and has a feminine build, so it doesn’t seem like the show was trying to surprise the viewer with the reveal that she’s female. She isn’t a returning character from the games, so the reveal isn’t significant in that regard either. It’s just baffling that they chose to hide both the appearance and voice (She doesn’t talk during that period) of the main character for a sizable portion of the episode for seemingly no reason. Much of the second half of the episode is devoted to exposition about the history of the North Ambria State where she and her allies live. If you’re a fan of the franchise, you might extract some pleasure out of this history lesson, but you’ll probably be better served reading a wiki.

In the opening, I mentioned that the assessment that Japan has good video game adaptations came with a “colossal asterisk.” I’m referring to the fact that they have a considerably greater number of adaptations, so there’s more opportunities for success. However, for every Steins;Gate or Advent Children, there are many more Devil May Crys or Persona 4 the Golden Animations. As a concept, a Trails adaptation should have been an easy win, as the games are set in a rich world, and this isn’t tied to the central plot of the Cold Steel games. However, as I covered previously, the narrative presented in the second half is muddled and unengaging. Despite that, the first half is substantially worse than the second, because it’s focused around fighting monsters, and the action is awful. I never thought of Trails of Cold Steel as a high-octane action series, but that’s how this show wanted to sell itself I guess, so here we are. Maybe the real reason Lavi wears a helmet during this part is because the animators were afraid they wouldn’t keep her on model, because the animation is stiff, ugly and it’s nearly impossible to identify characters. It’s not quite Last Dungeon Boonies bad, but it’s close. Furthermore, the quick cuts do nothing to hide the lack of polish and only make the fights harder to follow. Tatsunoko Production was helming this one, and they’re a studio that, aside from 2020’s mediocre Joran: The Princess of Snow and Blood, I’ve hardly thought of since Ping Pong the Animation or Gatchaman Crowds. This is a storied production company, but there is no excuse for the quality of what we see here.

Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:

• Do monster bodies canonically disappear in the Trails series? I always assumed that was just artistic license to simplify things. Then again, given the limits of the animation, I suppose that explanation might hold up to scrutiny here too. The monsters look out of place every time they show up in this episode, and I think it’s the melding of bad 2D animation combined with bad 3D animation that’s responsible for that also.
• This first episode contains mild spoilers for Trails of Cold Steel II. They’re sort of broad sweeping plot details, rather than character level spoilers, but this is just another reason for the uninitiated or relative newbies such as myself to avoid this drek.
• The music was a bit nice. I think there were a few tracks that were either reworked from the games or used shared elements. It’s been a while since I played them, so I can’t be sure.
• The OP and ED are okay. Technically, it’s some of the best animation in the episode, but it’s still nothing of note. It displays cast members from the games including Rean and Valimar, along with Gideon Osborne and, I think, Rufus Albarea. Thus even if the production had been good, I’d probably have shied away to avoid further spoilers.