Filling a niche. It was one of the few straight-up fantasy anime available to US fans in the earlier days of fandom, IIRC. I’m not exactly a scholar of anime history or whatever, but the closest contemporary I can think of is Dragon Half, which…doesn’t quite hit the D&D crossover fandom spot as much, you know?

-Naruto Manga: Your assessment of recent Naruto canon is sadly spot-on on the horrible, ironic way that you probably intended -_-;…

-Record of Lodoss War: …yeah, that all sounds about right, now that i think about it. One wonders how it developed such a following…

-American Comics: You might be surprised. A few of the more recent (in the last five years or so) animated adaptations of DC properties have actually been (in my opinion, anyway) pretty good, and adults who watch anime are more likely to watch american cartoons than adults who don’t watch anime, so you’re probably not the only one who has been leafing through DC’s back catalogue…