Heroic Legend of Arslan

Episode 15

Last week, I dug into The Heroic Legend of Arslan's problems with its visual style. This week, it has a lot of the same issues, but the really glaring flaw is in the writing. Together, these past two episodes exhibit why The Heroic Legend of Arslan hasn't been as good as it could be.

Rajendra has joined his army with the Parsian forces as they march through Sindhura. Arslan rings in the new year through a grand ceremony where he takes the part of the captured king. Rajendra proposes dividing their armies to more easily attack Gadevi's forces, which is usually a good war strategy, but Arslan's pals think Rajendra can't be trusted. They suspect he's planning to use them as a decoy and come up with an alternative plan at Narsus's suggestion. Meanwhile, they're about to pass through Gujarat (named after a real region in India) and arrive in the local lord's palace to beg safe passage—while secretly stealing off in the night anyway. Jaswant, Rajendra's "liege" who is actually working for Gadevi, spills the beans and plans to thwart them by attacking the people carrying their provisions, but he is foiled by Narsus too.

The first problem with all this is that way, way too much of it depends on Narsus's exposition. If you miss just a few of his lines explaining what he thinks of someone's strategy, or how a plan is going to unfurl, the following several minutes make no sense. This is a valid writing strategy with major plot reveals, and The Heroic Legend of Arslan used it well in the slip about Arslan's true parentage, but with one-off plot dumps, it seems like a lazy fault of adaptation. In a book, revealing these things purely through a crafty character's dialogue is fine, but in television, it's more engaging to see it play out onscreen. The Heroic Legend of Arslan is so faithful that it fails to be a visually arresting adventure. It's all words, words, words.

Secondly, does any of this really matter? There's more plotting, more battling, but ultimately it's a diversion from the story's main drive: getting Pars back under control and Arslan's personal journey. Rajendra is a fun character, but the show hasn't given us much reason to care about this subplot specifically. For all the setup of Jaswant as this extremely devious, threatening character, he gets dealt with inside of a few minutes, and even after he exits, Narsus says that he wasn't a big deal anyway. The show has done this a few times, and it's getting tiring. Make these conflicts mean something and make us care, or stop wasting time. The first two-thirds or so of the episode is largely self-contained, and the main characters don't even do much outside of Narsus's usual strategizing, and Gieve being a goofy flirt.

Really, everything that you need to know from this episode comes from its last five minutes. After Arslan captures Jaswant, they plan to execute him. He's tied up and accepted his fate, not even trying to plead for his life. Yet Jaswant lets one crucial tidbit of his sad existence loose: he answers only to his master and he has no family. The fact that he doesn't know who his parents are melts Arslan's heart, and no matter how much he knows better, he has to let Jaswant go.

Arslan has figured out by now that he's not the son of the king and the queen. This leads him to a brief identity crisis at the end of the episode, before Daryun reassures him that he'll still support him for being such a deserving ruler. This happens way too fast, to the point where I don't think it matters. It's likely that this isn't the end of his personal dilemma. It also comes out of nowhere, since that revelation was put on hold for so long to move forward on the (far less compelling) Sindhuran plotline. It's one thing for the dialogue not to mention it for a few episodes. It's another not to see Arslan reacting at all in the meantime.

This brings me to the general problems with Arslan's character. While his leadership strategy has changed over time as he's faced new challenges, his personality and values are very static. Arslan is less a protagonist and more a pivot point for the interesting characters as they grow and move the plot. That's not always a bad thing, but it's a problem here because we keep being told that he's changing without seeing it except in some very small ways. The arc about Arslan's identity crisis would be a great way to rectify this problem. After all, he's been told that the thing his entire future is predicated on isn't true. That should shake someone to their core. However, he bounces right back from it, avoiding growth yet again. If he was moved at all from this, he returned back to who he was before immediately.

This also seems like a clumsy fault of adaptation, by commenting through dialogue what needs to be shown. The Heroic Legend of Arslan really needs to figure out what works from its source in moving-picture form and what doesn't. It doesn't matter how great the raw story is; if you can't translate the writing to the confines of a television series, you're not doing it justice.

As it stands, The Heroic Legend of Arslan is unconvincing right now. I love political intrigue in my fantasy novels. I love identity crises, especially those revolving around family ties. There's so much here that I should love, but it almost feels like The Heroic Legend of Arslan doesn't want me to love it. This show really needs to step up its game, or risk losing its audience.

Rating: C+

Heroic Legend of Arslan is currently streaming on Funimation.

Rose is a music Ph.D. student who loves overanalyzing anime soundtracks. Follow her on her media blog Rose's Turn.