The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

Going down the ‘feature length and theatrically released anime’ path to continue the Lord of the Rings story is something I’m sure many didn’t see coming.

After the relative underperformance (at least critically) of The Hobbit films, which clearly didn’t need to be a full-fledged trilogy, and Amazon’s multi-million investment in The Rings of Power which, again, perhaps is starting to already feel longer than it should, a plus two-hour anime telling of one of Tolkien’s appendices is an interesting choice.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, straight off the bat, is one for the Rings and anime diehards.

If you foster those same criticisms of the aforementioned Hobbit and Rings of Power then there won’t be much here for you.

However, for those who are Tolkien disciples or anime obsessives, this will be a lovely little unexpected treat.

Let’s talk about the style first of all. Whether or not this was the direction to take the franchise and whether it truly ‘feels’ like a Rings film is up for debate but you cannot deny its beauty.

The painterly backgrounds and traditional style are often wondrous and scenes of these iconic locations depicted in this way with elements of Howard Shore’s original score blaring alongside them bring hairs to the neck in classic Lord of the Rings fashion.

The characters aren’t wildly memorable in a visual sense though. The absence of fantasy creations in favour of humans helps ground the story stakes but loses the touch of Rings and has echoes more of a Game of Thrones type political war story.

For anyone not sold on anime, or even just simply not used to it, it does feel its runtime too. Despite the stakes, despite the action and despite the dramatic events it just drags slightly too long.

Those stakes, that action and those events are pretty juicy. It’s an interesting story of the former King of Rohan Helm Hammerhand and how he lends his name to Helm’s Deep.

There’s large scale battles, deception, honour, sacrifice and even some slightly shoehorned in Easter Eggs but it can’t quite shake the feeling of being a ‘lesser’ part of Rings lore.

So certainly inessential but nonetheless clearly painstakingly laboured over, largely beautiful and containing many of Tolkien’s key themes.

Probably one to skip over in the Lord of the Rings marathon but, if you’re the type to reach for the extended editions or argue that you’re not a fan if you haven’t read The Silmarillion then this might just be right up your street.

⭐️⭐️⭐️