I recently attended the FUNimation screening of the first four episodes of the amazing anime show with the laughably redundant title of Legend of Legendary Heroes. Seriously, don't let the goofy title put you off on this show. I made the same mistake with Tears to Tiara which I now own the box set of and just completely finished last week. I also made the same mistake with Desert Punk which turned out to be one of my all-time favorites, though in the case of Desert Punk it was more the box art that was off-putting...I just thought the main character's outfit looked ridiculous and so I avoided the show for months, until I finally saw a trailer for it and decided I should give it a chance after all.
Come to think of it, same thing happened to me for Legend of Legendary Heroes as well; I watched the trailer and was immediately hooked; told myself "I have to go see this!!". It was also a hard sell at first because this screening would be on back to back nights opposite another show, this one by Sentai Filmworks the Monday evening previous, namely Infinite Stratos, which I also attended on a whim and will be reviewing briefly in my next post.
Legend of Legendary Heroes is a very entertaining and so far well written sword and sorcery fantasy epic with an intriguingly dark backstory. It is the story of an idealistic usurper King of a vaguely European-style Medieval kingdom and his closest friends and allies. He is a reformist King with high ambition of making the world a better place. To that end he befriends and later commissions a rogue barbarian sorcerer with fearsome innate powers he himself can barely control to travel across the land in search of ancient magical artifacts in a bid to secure his future hold on power.
The voice cast is excellent, with veteran voice actress Luci Christian voicing the sword-wielding, strong female lead.
Brina Palencia voices a minor character and quasi (early) love interest of the main protagonist, our wayward sorcerer, who is a bit of a slacker and anti-hero. I've heard she does not really feature much in the main story, which is a bit of a disappointment to hear.
Fair warning, this show contains very gruesome and brutal depictions of very violent death. It makes Gantz look amateurish by comparison. If Gantz and, say, Negima!? had an illicit love child it would probably come out looking like Legend of Legendary Heroes.
