Original Animated Vehicle: Thoughts Caused by Arslan That Are About More Than Arslan

The Heroic Legend of Arslan (henceforth, just Arslan) is a six-episode fantasy OAV series made over the course of four years, from 1991-1995.  It is based on a set of ongoing  (actual, non-lite) novels by acclaimed author Yoshiki Tanaka who also wrote a little series called Legend of the Galactic Heroes.  In some ways, Arslan functions a lot like a low-fantasy version of LOGH but without the parts that apparently bother some people who are not me.

This post is not an Arslan review.

The above is meant as a little taste of background in case anyone wants to go out and catch some Arslan, which I’d advise everyone to do.  Rather than review this particular anime here, I want to discuss the larger, more general thoughts that Arslan led me to think.   The show represents some of the things I love most about anime, but it also foreshadows a current anime trend that I find troubling.  I will use a couple of the OAV’s prominent aspects as jumping-off points for this discussion.