English Dub Review: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel – Northern War “Breaking the Blue Crystal Ice” “At the End of an Ashen Journey”

Overview:

The Empire scouting squad finds itself in hot springs paradise Ymir, where they encounter a phenomenon that has turned the hot springs cold. Lavian and Iseria investigate, but Iseria ends up trapped in freezing conditions. Lavian must try to free her with the limited options at her disposal.

The squad takes a train to their next destination, yet to find any information on the Empire’s hero. But an accident puts Lavian face-to-face with someone that might know a thing or two about him…

Our Take:

I have a bit of bad news pertaining to the dub, it seems that at the very least Sean Chiplock and Xanthe Huynh will not be reprising their roles of Rean Schwarzer and Altina Orion respectively. This is very unfortunate since they were announced to be returning but I am sure there is a good reason. It almost sounded to me like Eric Vale was voicing Rean but I could be wrong. I am looking forward to seeing who is voicing these characters soon. For those who love the games, Sean has confirmed that he has finished recording his lines for the upcoming Trails into Reverie.

The cameos in this anime are amazing but I feel like a broken record because once again I have to say that without knowledge of the game world then a lot of this is just confusing window dressing. It’s fun of course but it also doesn’t serve any purpose for the story at hand. With the prominence of Rean in the OP, I feel he will play a big part in this series. I’m curious as to how they will make this a non-jarring process for newbies.

In the first episode, we go to Ymir, which once again is a fairly important game location. It’s actually Rean’s hometown so I was pretty excited to see the crew go there.

Next up was the big one where Lavian meets Rean, and for a second there I thought Lavian was about to join Rean’s ever-growing harem. I suppose there’s still time but with him being the hero of the country that is attacking her homeland I imagine that won’t go well. Besides, he has Laura and she will always be the best girl! (I know that all players can choose their own waifu but they are wrong if they choose anyone else).

What I can say is that I am having fun watching this series but I also have to try to be unbiased. This series thus far only stands out as enjoyable to me because of my relationship with the games. I hate to say this but so far it’s been a mid-tier anime.