English Dub Season Review: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel – Northern War Season One

Overview: 

To protect her hometown from the Erebonian Empire and to distinguish herself from her grandfather’s disloyalty, Lavie enlists in the Northern Jaegers where she’ll do whatever it takes to carry out the mission. Now this rule breaker must form a platoon to embark on a dangerous recon mission into enemy lines—will her mission be a success?

Our Take:

This is a very tough series to review mainly because I love the games it’s based on and wanted to love this one. But unfortunately, the only thing it delivered was a disappointment and mild enjoyment. The voice acting for this was the biggest letdown as Crunchyroll dropped the ball big time.

It’s nothing against the people who got cast in this show, in fact, the ones who play the original characters for this anime do great. What was upsetting is that a dub for this was announced pretty early into its airing and when it was announced they said that all the voice cast from the games would be returning as well. In case you haven’t guessed yet that wasn’t the case at all. I think of the original cast only one or two returned and what makes it even more frustrating is that no reason was given. I can deal with recasts especially for a show like this because I understand that VAs are busy and can’t always make time for something that could just amount to a cameo but then don’t announce it. We could have avoided a lot of heartbreak if there were just no announcements made.

The animation also wasn’t much to write home about. It wasn’t bad and it wasn’t especially great, it got the job done. Getting to see some of the characters I love from this series animated was great but that was about it.

What makes this series even harder to recommend is the fact that I feel you need to have knowledge of the games to get any enjoyment out of this. Why should a random person picking this up care about North Ambria, Rean Schwarzer, or just about any of the plot points?

In the end, Northern War was an okay watch for me but I also fit into its audience. Even with that I wouldn’t say I “enjoyed” it but more like I endured it. I hate saying this about one of my favorite video game series getting an anime but maybe it needs to just stick to the games. It’s last foray into the anime world didn’t do it any favors either…