‘The War of the Rohirrim’ Insists That You Can Drag Anime Into the ‘Lord of the Rings’ Universe

Amazon’s TV series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” has already learned that it can be risky to delve into the world created by J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novels and put on screen in Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning film trilogy. In fact, Jackson himself learned that when he followed his “Lord of the Rings” films with the three overstuffed and significantly less appreciated “Hobbit” movies.

But now the makers of the animated film “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” are taking on an even more daunting challenge: They’re not only building a story only glancingly mentioned in Tolkien’s legendarium, but they’re doing so using the medium of anime, a distinctly different form from the CG-heavy live-action world that Jackson created.

For director Kenji Kamiyama (“Blade Runner: Black Lotus,” “Napping Princess”), however, the different medium was an advantage. “Hand-drawn pictures give the audience room for imagination,” he said in an email interview. “In live-action, the expression needs to be as real as possible to sustain suspension of disbelief, but in anime, a degree of unreality can also be convincing.”

Still, his film depicted key locations from Jackson’s films — in particular the kingdom of Rohan and the fortress of Helm’s Deep from “The Two Towers” — to tell the back story of Rohan King Helm Hammerhand and his daughter Héra in the war that gave Helm’s Deep its name.

“We depict the same places shown in Peter Jackson’s films with the same basic designs, thus making the audience aware of the connection between the world of the live-action ‘Lord of the Rings’ and the world depicted in this animation,” Kamiyama said. “Although the background art is mostly hand-drawn, we took care to make it look realistic via lighting effects and camera work.”

Additional links to the Jackson films include the narration by Miranda Otto in the character of Rohan noblewoman Éowyn, whom she played in the last two “LOTR” movies.

“We had to make a film that was comparable to Hollywood movies,” Kamiyama said. “Since the scale of this project was so different from any other animated films I’d done in Japan, just completing the film within the given set of parameters for this grand project was itself the challenge.”

Animators accustomed to working in anime had particular problems during the huge battle scenes, in which  scores of warriors and horses move independently, a technique seldom used in their usual medium. “The animators’ instinct is to copy and reuse the same animated movements, so I had to convince them to change them one by one,” he said.

For a climactic battle fought by Helm Hammerhand in a blinding snowstorm, Kamiyama created a vivid action scene in which the action isn’t always seen. “Here it felt almost like shooting a live-action movie,” he said. “I wanted to make the snowstorm be dangerous enough to kill anyone standing there, so I had the effects team give their all. At the final compositing stage, we considered the balance between the visibility and the obscurity of the characters, and I gave instructions that sometimes it was okay for the characters to be hidden from view.”

Asked if he was conscious of trying to satisfy viewers who had a strong emotional connection to this world either through the books or the films, Kamiyama said, “Most certainly. That was the part I paid the most attention to. I knew I couldn’t please everyone on all fronts, but by being a fan myself, I tried to understand their passionate feelings and then looked for things that would satisfy my own inner devotee.”

This story first appeared in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

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