The Legend of Heroes: Sen no Kiseki - Northern War

For many years following the North Ambrian Disaster, North Ambria has been known as the poorest region in Zemuria. After the state suffered a major loss due to the mysterious Salt Pale turning citizens and buildings into salt, the economy has never truly recovered. Out of necessity to secure foreign investment for the state, the former state military has turned into a group of mercenaries known as the Northern Jaegers.

Wishing to join the largest group of mercenaries on the continent, Lavian "Lavi" Winslet, a promising rookie, enlists with the Northern Jaegers. Although she has only been with them for half a year, the reserved but capable Lavi Winslet is well respected by her peers. When Lavi and her team are tasked with gathering information regarding the Imperial Hero of Erebonia—a new threat to the state—she discovers that there may be more to the continent's intricate politics than meets the eye.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Winslet, Lavian Main

Koichi, Makoto Japanese

Frost, Iseria Main

Bridcutt, Sarah Emi Japanese

Drake, Talion Main

Ono, Yuuki Japanese

Robinson, Martin S. Main

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Bright, Estelle Supporting

Kanda, Akemi Japanese

Schwarzer, Rean Supporting

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Bannings, Lloyd Supporting

Kakihara, Tetsuya Japanese

Bright, Joshua Supporting

Saiga, Mitsuki Japanese

Orion, Altina Supporting

Minase, Inori Japanese

Mao, Rixia Supporting

Satou, Rina Japanese

Sabat, Christopher Producer

Li, Ni Producer

Chan, Ming H. Producer, Planning

Yang, Jianli Producer

Reviews

Mar 25, 2023

Avroraa

Recommended

I watched this anime and I have to say, it's not bad. It's pretty obvious that it's geared towards fans of the Kiseki series and Cold Steel, but if you're not familiar with the games, you might find yourself a bit lost. It was cool to see my boi Rean animated, but the plot wasn't anything too groundbreaking. The show doesn't spend a lot of time explaining things, which could be a good thing if you're already familiar with the lore, but might leave for anime only audience confused. That being said, they do introduce some interesting details about North Ambria that weren't in the ... games. Overall, it's an average anime that might be worth checking out if you're a fan of the games.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Mar 24, 2023

cosme7

Mixed Feelings

Warning for those who are going to watch it, to have a better idea of the anime, I recommend having played at MINIMUM Legend of Heroes Cold Steel 1 & 2!
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I rarely do reviews for anime, because I've watched so much stuff and starting to do it for new animes that are coming out makes me lazy, but Legend of Heroes is an exception XD, finally the review!
Even in the discussion threads and in other reviews, the story is rushed, which I already expected being an adaptation of a Region that we didn't even set foot in the game (And also contain only 12 episodes), ... we only heard the events in CS3, so the Falcom saw no need to make a game just for that specific region.
I think that if the media used to tell these events had been a Light Novel or Manga, it would have been better told and less rushed, especially if it had been an LN.
I already expected that the quality in terms of the story would not be "great", but I must say that it is not rubbish as some may complain, in terms of animation, it is pretty decent or honest if you prefer another term, other animes of the season it has average to weak animations, and Kiseki's anime is far from being "trash" in this regard, I could even expect more if it was a Square Enix, which is not the case :P.
It turns out that in the end, the anime is fanservice, of course it's not THE BEST, but it's still one XD, since I went to watch it without expecting much, my hype was low, so I was able to digest the content better.
The biggest problem is that you go watch it with HYPE, expecting a level of game history, compressed into 12 episodes, if you go with that mindset, the anime will definitely be a disappointment, because let's face it, it's impossible to compress something that would have known there about 15h to 30h of gameplay in 12 episodes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 25, 2023

Tkit

Not Recommended

This anime is a piece of horrendous shit, I mean it, a giant turd that stinks so much you could get sick, so if you can, stay away from it. The only and I mean ONLY instance in which you could CONSIDER watching this is if you played the original game, despite not playing myself I still think it isn't worth it even if you did.

Story takes place in a sci-fi fictional world with heavy focus on politics. Our protagonist lives in a desolate, impoverished military dictatorship which independence is being threatened by imperialistic superpower whose leaders are plotting on how to annex their smaller ... neighbor. Our main character, Lavi, decides to join the military. Despite being a rookie it quickly turns out that she is op compared to other soldiers, for those and other reasons she quickly catches attention of nations elites and is sent on a mission to inflirtrate a hostile empire. Premise is quite interesting, with politics, intrigue, espionage, vast world, large cast of characters and even mechs, unfortunately this show fails at all of those aspects dramatically.

To show to you the quality of writing in this show I thought it best to summarize the first episode.
Our protagonist is on a escort mission delivering some cargo, she is in a helmet covering her face and not speaking for some reason. After 5 minutes of walking and exposition they come across a village nearby that is being attacked by some monsters, its time for a side mission during the escort mission. We have some action (more on that later) and its time to survey the village. It turns out Lavi is talking with side characters as they are repling to her, but we don't hear her which is very awkward. After a while we see that there is an even bigger monster, oh no! Thankfully our mc is able to get rid of him, but during the fight she loses her helmet to reveal that *drum roll* she is a girl... no way! And now she talks and will never wear a helmet again, yes thats right all of this was for an epic reveal that this small soldier with slender figure is in fact a female. We get to the capital and start to explore it, during the tour random npcs start to beg our characters to help out with their problems, but they aren't interested in another side mission. Some more exposition of things characters should know and than out of nowhere some Rogan guy pulls over with his squad and starts talking with Lavi about her grandfather and how he was a hero and now there is a huge crowd behind him chanting his name so he decides to make a warmongering speach about how he is going to start a revolution and thats the episode. First episode is literally protagonist being harassed by random missions and events. This represents the average quality of episodes in this series, but don't worry it can get much worse (clown episode).

Let's talk about the plot. As you could see in my example, plot convenience happens and it does so very often. Everyone randomly stumbles upon each other/knows where to go. End is predictably rushed and I wasn't happy about it.
While there are slow moments, from time to time writers will just introduce new things in a rapid fire pace. They do so mainly with sudden new plot threads you need to care about and when it introduces another batch of characters. The huge amount of storylines leads to most if not all of them being underdeveloped, same goes for characters. As late as in tenth episode we are introduced to another very important place for Lavi's full with new people and no matter how much anime wants me to care I never will. Our hero is a very boring protagonist. She is a model soldier with no charisma or interesting personality. Instead writers went with the "cool silent type" except she isn't cool. Later on she has to confront her legacy which is a bit interesting, with her starting to care about the well being of everyone and turning more into generic type of a protector.

In political shows it is important for the viewer to care about the politicians as a characters and have interest in the fictional world, unfortunately we only get to know two of the many more of those politicians. Maybe you will care about them, but I never did and even a fancy hair colour didn't manage to change that. There are no cool intrigues to be honest. They didn't even manage to pull off a mystery in a political show, when someone gets assassinated it is immediately obvious who did it. As for the world, while being very big and detailed could be considered as a benefit it turned out to be too vast. Authors had to bombard me with exposition to explain as much as possible about everything even tho many of the details turned out to be irrelevant to the story.

Ok, but what about all of the spy stuff? It's bad, obviously. For the infiltration arc let's call it, anime enters episodic format. Every episode is basically a side quest ranging from boring to an awful clown episode. I could make a rant about how goofy and stupid that episode was, but let's just move on to the overall problem... everyone is stupid.

To be clear that isn't exclusive to only infiltration arc, stupid moments are quite common and I will show some examples in the most non-spoilery way possible.
Government decided to send some military instructors as spies without any spy training. Inflirating a foreign country Lavi uses her real name to soldier of a hostile government. While being pursued Lavi's team decides to take a break and they decide to just start chilling making a campfire... this whole mission was carried out terribly. Not to stay with main characters I will tell one more example that kept infuriating me. The palace in the capital, where all the leaders are, is completely empty and with almost no security. Countless times someone just walks in wearing a random uniform and gets to do whatever they want.

With all of those negatives is production quality good? Can we see at least some cool action? You should know the answer by now. Fights are bad and stiff. There is a lot of cgi which doesn't blend well with 2d. Visually speaking the only interesting part are all of the various cities, other than that it is very bland.

To conclude, this anime is a hot pile of garbage with no redeeming qualities. I hope it will be the worst thing I watch this year.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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	Poll: The Legend of Heroes: Sen no Kiseki - Northern War Episode 12 Discussion Stark700 - Mar 24, 2023	31 replies	by Kenchiin »» Jan 23, 8:46 AM
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