The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel - Northern War

If you have not played Trails of Cold Steel (Sen no Kiseki) 1 and 2 don't even bother watching this anime. This is not an adaptation of the games' story meant to get new fans into the franchise, this is an original side story to the games and expects you to know the story of at least the first two Cold Steel games (but it has references to every Trails game, not just Cold Steel) If you are a fan of the games like I am you're probably going to end up watching the anime regardless of what I say, making this review kind of redundant,but aside from finally getting to see North Ambria after hearing about it for 12 games, this anime doesn't add anything of value to the overall story of Trails and simply isn't worth watching. As the anime's name implies, this is the story of the North Ambrian war that happened between Trails of Cold Steel 2 and 3. However rather than focusing on the war itself this anime spends most of its run time developing its characters and simply foreshadowing the upcoming war (this is still Trails after all and it's paced exactly like the games). So instead of the war, the story follows our 4 main characters as they travel to Erebonia to search for information about Rean, and I honestly liked those episodes quite a lot. The cast has a good dynamic with each other and it's cute seeing the culture shock they experience as they explore Erebonia's big cities since they're all from the poor countrysides of North Ambria. Add in a few cameos from different game characters and you have a pretty strong beginning that, despite being essentially filler, makes you like the characters and get invested in their anxities about the upcoming war. But that all changes when they leave back to North Ambria and the actual plot of the Northern War gets going. The actual plot is rushed and convoluted, and even the events that are specifically mentioned in Cold Steel 3 happen so fast that if you haven't already heard what happened there by playing Cold Steel 3 I wonder if you'd even understand their significance. This sereis needed more than 12 episodes if they were going to spend half of its episodes touring Erebonia instead of progressing the plot, because as fun as their Erebonian tour was to watch, it's because the show spent so long on that tour that the main plot of the show simply does not have enough time to develop. The art and animation are also quite frankly terrible. The whole show looks incredibly cheap but I could forgive that if the animation was good to compensate for the cheap art, but no, even the animation is cheap. The animation is so cheap that in episode 3 there's a fight scene against the episode's villain that happens entirely outside of the screen as you just hear the sound effects but don't get to see anything. And while that is the lowest point of the show's animation, the highest points really aren't much better. Ultimately I'm not sure what the point of this anime is. It's clearly not meant for helping new fans get into the series because it just does not explain its setting or any of the concepts, so new fans would be completely lost. But for old fans there really isn't much to offer. You already know how the war is going to end because you've heard about it in Cold Steel 3, and that wouldn't be bad if the anime was great on its own, but it really isn't. I can only recommend this to Trails megafans like myself who obsess over everything Trails and want to finally see what North Ambria is like after hearing about it for 12 games, but if you're a Trails megafan like myself you're most likely going to watch this regardless of what I have to say in this review.

The TL;DR is that this was made as an ad for a gacha game and thus I recommend steering clear of this. For anyone who is not a Trails fan, this anime is utter garbage. For anyone who IS a Trails fan, this anime is THE BIGGEST insult to the entire franchise. If you like Trails or are thinking of trying it, play the actual games and feel free to forget this thing ever existed. For context: It chronologically takes place between Cold Steel 2 and Cold Steel 3, during a major event that happened in that period. One would think this anime would focuson said event and explained what happened in detail, portraying the key characters from the game through the perspective of a new cast, right? But no. Nothing happens during the vast majority of this anime. They even take time to introduce some goddamn random ahh clown that serves 0 effing purpose in episode 3, only to disappear a moment later. The only relevant episodes are roughly the last 3, and even those give you less information than a mid-conversation recap from Cold Steel 3 does. It explains nothing, yet only adds more questions. It's only purpose is to serve as an ad to the Northern War mobile gacha game they released, and quite frankly, everything about this is horrendous (even the gacha game itself). The character designs, the pacing, the cuts, the fact they put up a flashback scene literally 5 seconds after you've seen the said flashback scene. In short, steer clear of this giant pile of stinky. It's not worth your time and it won't explain anything.

As a massive fan of the series I'm aware of how complicated it is and how tough it was going to be for this anime to achieve any kind of balance between new and existing fans. Well, they succeeded on evening the playing field in one way, it stinks in every conceivable way. If you're looking for a story about, you know, the Northern War, well tough, because this isn't about that almost(!) at all. It's a story of JRPG Preset Characters 1 to 4 going on holiday, then some politics happens. I'm being as careful as I can, without being specific, so I don't haveto trigger the spoiler warning. Certain fans will go in expecting certain events to take place that simply don't in any major way. They know what I mean. It's important to know that going in. The characters are dreadful in almost every conceivable way. The story makes little sense in its own right and none in the greater context of the world. It's so badly written I lost track of what on earth was happening at multiple points, and I've played every Trails game with an official localisation within the last 12 months. Everything outside the stuff mentioned above is generically bad, it's horrible but doesn't make me want to put out a lit cigarette on my eyes and ears. The Kiseki Nut on Youtube has a great breakdown of why this is bad, just know it is and avoid. The sole highlight is that in Nihon Falcom's direct hands I think Lavian might be kinda interesting. Maybe.