From The Animatrix to powerhouse Japanese studio Science Saru bringing us Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, the tackling of Western intellectual properties by the anime industry has proved fruitful over the last few decades – just look at how some of the most exciting Star Wars material of late has come from Star Wars: Visions. With The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, this merging of East and West talent and ideas gets its biggest platform to date.
It's a two-hour-plus feature given a wide theatrical release across the globe, conceived to fit within the continuity of Peter Jackson's live-action Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films (he's an executive producer on this), and directed by the prolific anime veteran Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex), with various major Japanese animation houses credited as contributors to the project. But despite all its impressive credentials, this hopeful blockbuster sadly proves to be one of the more uninspired examples of an English-language property being given an anime makeover.
