Witness the birth of a new hero.note
WARNING: Due to the Trails Series being a Long Runner, this page assumes that you have at least played up to Trails of Cold Steel II. The page will be filled with unmarked spoilers from the previous games, so be careful of Late Arrival Spoilers ahead.
The Principality of North Ambria is considered as the least developed country on the continent of Zemuria, due to the Salt Pale Incident that struck the nation in the year S. 1178. For its citizens to survive, many have joined a group that will do anything for money called the "Northern Jaegers", said to be the largest Jaeger Corps in the continent. The Northern Jaegers have done a lot of dirty deeds in their name to send money to its citizens back home to help with rebuilding the nation.
One such deed was during the Empire of Erebonia's Civil War; on December 24, S. 1204, the market town of Celdic was burned to the ground by the Northern Jaegers under the orders of Duke Helmut Albarea of the Noble Alliance. When the Reformists ultimately won against the Noble Alliance, the government demanded accountability for what had happened at Celdic. While negotiations were happening between Erebonia and the North Ambria Parliament, the latter was seized by the Northern Jaegers on July 5, S. 1205, who claimed that they should not be held accountable for what had happened at Celdic.
Not long before, the Northern Jaegers, spooked by reports of an unknown "Soldat" that single-handedly repelled Calvardian forces in Erebonian-occupied Crossbell, send Instructor Lavian Winslet, granddaughter of North Ambria's hero-turned-traitor Vlad, and her team to Erebonia to infiltrate the nation and collect information of Erebonia's national hero and his secret weapon before his presence threatens all of North Ambria and its inevitable war with The Empire.
Animated by Tatsunoko Production as their 60th anniversary project, The Legend Of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel - Northern War takes place between the events of Cold Steel II and Cold Steel III and depicts the events of the Northern War between Erebonia and North Ambria. The first episode aired on January 8, 2023 with Crunchyroll simulcasting the show.
A mobile tie-in game was released in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan in December 2023.
The official website can be found here
while the official trailers for the anime can be found here, here, and here.
The Legend Of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel - Northern War provides examples of:
- Action Girl: It's a part of the Trails Series; this trope was going to happen. In this case, we have Lavian Winslet, a member of the Northern Jaegers and the second female protagonist of the franchise after Estelle Bright.
- A Child Shall Lead Them: Lavian leads her team into the empire to spy on Erebonia's national hero and bring back any intel they have on him. Keep in mind that she's only 15 during the anime.
- Adaptational Badass: Rean in Valimar can link up with Class VII to use EX Arts on his enemy but they only target one enemy in the games. In the anime however, Sara's "Thundering Roar" EX Art can essentially pull off a group kill on a group of archaisms in the final episode.
- Bittersweet Ending: By the end, North Ambria ends up getting annexed by the Erebonia empire, leaving the Northern Jaegers goal All for Nothing and the scars of the war still persists within its citizens. However, most of the cast survives, Jayna is killed, ensuring she doesn't cause more chaos, and Lavia ends up becoming close to Rean.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Ivano and Tak may act like goofballs and aren't above trying to tease Lavi, who's only a rookie in their eyes, but they're competent enough to kill a monster right behind them without looking at said monster by firing rifles at the enemy with only one hand.
- Call-Forward:
- In the finale, Lavi tells Rean that he'd make a good teacher. He becomes one in Cold Steel III.
- In the finale, a berserk Rean unleashes a reddish black Pillar of Light that parts the sky, revealing the moon. In Cold Steel IV, this is exactly how his father Osborne pulls off his Finishing Move "Dirge of Erebos", only in a purplish black that can be seen in space.
- In the finale's closing montage, we see Aurelia look at dossiers on the future members of New Class VII, paying special attention to Musse's. This implies that Aurelia already had plans to move Musse and Ash to Class VII right from the beginning.
- Continuity Cameo:
- In episode 4 on their way to Ymir from Ordis, Ash (Raquel), Bleublanc (Heimdallr), Sharon, and Alisa (Roer) show up without any speaking lines.
- Episode 7 has Elise, Alfin, and Musse hanging out at St. Astraia. And at the post-credits scene, Ines, Ennea, and Gilbert are shown at North Ambria though they are unvoiced.
- Episode 8 has the entire Liberl Team (barring Kevinnote ) showing up while unnamed soldiers are discussing how Erebonia was able to annex both Jurai State and Crossbell, noting the "steam tanks" incident that happened in Liberl during Sky SC. Cassius and Mueller also make an appearance. Olivert even gets a speaking role where he talks with Osborne about the situation in North Ambria, claiming that the events are going All According to Plan for Osborne.
- Episode 11 has Lloyd and Rixia at Geofront E who decided to hack the servers again to confirm the newest plan of the Erebonian empire. Thankfully for them this time, Rean isn't there to bust the server as Rean is at North Ambria.
- Episode 12 has Kevin and Ries at Morges Bakery, Renne in her Jenis school uniform (with Estelle and Joshua watching alongside her) watching Iseria and two students do archery, and Roselia at Bryonia Island looking at Ark Rouge.
- Continuity Snarl: Episode 11 has Lloyd fiddling with his device with a picture of the SSS and in the picture, he's depicted with a red shirt when during that point, he's always wearing a yellow shirt.
- The Coup: This was mentioned during the events of Cold Steel III but near the end of episode 8, Rogan's faction makes their move to seize the North Ambrian Parliament with Lavi nearly being held captive, only for her to break out quickly and go to Glark before Rogan stops her as the two of them see Glark dead.
- Cue the Sun: After Lavi stabs the Grunoja-type monster, the sun starts to pierce through the snowy clouds.
- Diving Save: When Lavian falls while a monster was chasing after her, Rean dives to save her in his arms.
- The Dreaded: Rean and Valimar in this anime end up becoming this in the eyes of Calvard and North Ambria, which is why the Northern Jaegers send Lavian and her team to collect intel on him. His almost single-handedly pushing back the republic's forces in Crossbell have lead to them being concerned that, if the Empire decides to expand and convert North Ambria as well, nothing the struggling country can scrape together would be capable of stopping him — and given the feats Rean has pulled off in Valimar up to that point, they're right.
- Dramatic Irony: In episode 4, the North Ambrian cast are trying to find out information about Rean and any intel about him. Talion narrates in a cable car on the way to Ymir while they pass by Bleublanc, Sharon, and Alisa, who clearly know who Rean is.
- Dub Name Change: Northumbria is the name of the country in Japanese but was changed to North Ambria when Sky was localized and the name stuck ever since.
- Dynamic Entry: Towards the end of episode 11, Rean inside Valimar shows up and disables the archaisms in one slash without hitting them.
- Enemy Mine: In episode 12, the imperial Soldats and the Northern Jaegers have no choice but to team up to defeat the Archaisms and protect the civilians.
- Experienced Protagonist: Due to the Perspective Flip, Rean's experiences in the civil war now make him an extremely difficult and challenging opponent to the neighbouring countries, with Lavi's mission being to find out enough about him to potentially locate a weakness that would prevent him steamrolling through North Ambria should the Empire invade. Which it will.
- Fire/Water Juxtaposition: In the opening, Rean is still using his Cold Steel II OST pose that represents fire but instead of Crow representing water, he's instead replaced with Lavi who represents the snowy ice theme.
- Fish out of Water: The four are clearly out of their depth at how peaceful and lively the citizens of the empire compared to the people at North Ambria.
- Foregone Conclusion:
- Seeing as how the anime is an interquel between the events of Cold Steel II and Cold Steel III, and that the latter revealed the conclusion of the war near the beginning of the game, it's clear that North Ambria will become a part of the Erebonian Empire and Rean will lose his control of his Spirit Unification thanks to this war. As if to hammer the point home, Jayna is shown to be stockpiling archaisms given to her by Campanella; archaisms attacking civilians was what caused Rean to go berserk.
- Episode 7 has Elliot and Machias trying to convince Rean to let go of his Martyr Without a Cause tendencies. Unfortunately for them, Rean doesn't get to let go of these and in fact doubles down on it due to the events of the Northern War.
- Episode 9 shows Lavi attempting to get the archaism control device away from Rogan, disabling the archaisms. Given that these are the same archaisms that end up driving Rean berserk, it's obvious this won't work, or at the very least won't work for long. As such, Lavi ends up tripping an alarm and is forced to flee into the sewers, seemingly leading to her being shot by Talion.
- Frickin' Laser Beams: In episode 6, Millium makes Lammy fire her Variant Beam attack at Martin, nearly missing him but manages to cut him off by destroying a tree that blocks his path.
- Glowing Eyes: Whenever Valimar acts, his eyes start glowing.
- Hero Antagonist: Rean, the protagonist of the Cold Steel saga, is an antagonist in the anime due to North Ambria having the point-of-view.
- Heroes Gone Fishing: He may not be the protagonist of the anime but Rean still keeps his fishing gear with him as shown in episode 5. He also lends his gear to Lavi who plays this straight.
- Humongous Mecha: Various Drakkhen Panzer Soldats appear in the anime, as does Valimar, the Ashen Divine Knight and the empire's secret weapon.
- Improbable Age: At 15 years of age, Lavian is already an instructor for the Northern Jaegers.
- Just Following Orders: Martin rationalizes this trope as the reason why he was part of the jaeger team in burning down Celdic. While Talion does agree that this is what they do as Northern Jaegers, he still doesn't like the system with Martin calling him out if Talion has a plan about it.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The anime does not pull any punches when it comes to spoilers from the past games. From the mention of the annexation of the state of Crossbell to the national hero of Erebonia, a first time viewer of the anime who has no prior knowledge of the games would just get lost. Even the steam tanks incident in Liberl is casually mentioned by the cast.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Near the end of episode 5, Rean pieces together that Lavi and her team are jaegers and are infiltrating the empire but he doesn't know why. When he asks Altina, she responds that she doesn't have that kind of clearance to tell him.
- Monster Clown: The villain of episode 3 is a terrorist clown seeking to kill the wealthy elite of Ordis.
- Mr. Exposition: Both Ivano and Tak explain to the silent Lavi all about what is to know about North Ambria. Meanwhile, a grandmother that the jaegers saved from the village explains how North Ambria became what it is today with her mentioning the Salt Pale Incident.
- Ms. Red Ink: Iseria has a bad habit of blowing tons of money on souvenirs on the scouting mission, to Talion's frustration who is trying to keep them on a tight budget. Lavi is one to a lesser extant, though only when it comes to food.
- My Name Is Inigo Montoya: At the end of episode 11, Lavi confronts Rean by declaring her name and challenges him to a duel. Rean accepts as he gets out of Valimar where he's about to draw his tachi before the episode ends.
- Nonchalant Dodge: Lavi dodges all of Ivano's thrown snowballs without looking at him.
- "Not So Different" Remark: In the final episode, Rean notes that he and Lavi aren't all that different as he notes that all he wanted to do was to protect his family and friends before he got called as a heronote , noting that Lavi's the same.
- One Head Taller: When Lavi finally meets Rean in episode 5, it turns out that her height only reaches up to his shoulders.
- One-Man Army: Rean piloting Valimar is basically this on a battlefield, with his flight capabilities and strengthened combat experiences from fighting in the civil war against comparably skilled pilots and machines, particularly Crow, making him unmatched when facing off against the under-equipped tanks and airplanes neighbouring countries posses. The fact that the Empire is the only one capable of producing Soldats (disregarding Oroborous and their machinations) means the surrounding countries simply don't have anything capable of realistically defeating such a powerful machine with a skilled pilot behind it. And as shown in episode 11, he doesn't even have to touch the archaisms to disable them with one slash while sparing the citizens at the same time.
- Pretext for War: As episode 6 shows, Erebonia has a very good reason for going to war against North Ambria with Claire and Rufus discussing it at Orchis Tower. That is that the Northern Jaegers, under the orders of Duke Albarea, burned down Celdic and killed Imperial citizens to make an example out of them. It's also revealed that Martin was one of the jaegers who did the deed. At the end of the episode, he's captured by the Intelligence Division while he allows Lavi, Iseria, and Talion to escape.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: As shown in the opening, Rean is supposed to be the red to Lavi's blue. But just like Rean's relationship with Crow, who is the red and blue between both Rean and Lavi can be very different. When Rean's trying to be friendly, he's clearly the red to Lavi's blue who could care less at first before she opens up to him a little bit. But when it comes to North Ambria, Lavi's certainly hotblooded to the point she wants to murder Rean, while Rean is more or less accepting to his role as the hero of the empire.
- Slashed Throat: How Jayna meets her end at Tallion's hands.
- Switching P.O.V.: Rean and the Erebonia Empire are perceived as the main antagonists of North Ambria.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Lavi's actions in episode one may have saved the day but she did disobey the order to take on the monster by herself, dragging Ivano and Tak to go after her. It ends with the three of them taking a pay cut for three months after they write an apology letter.
- The Quiet One: Lavi doesn't talk a lot, which allows the rest of the cast to explain things to the audience.
- Those Two Guys: Ivano and Tak are seen together alongside Lavi.
- We Will Meet Again: Inverted with Lavi wishing she'd never meet Rean again but if circumstances will it, they'll probably meet one way or another.
- Wham Episode:
- In episode 6, Lechter exposes Lavi's lineage to the rest of the squad and reveals that Martin was involved in the razing of Celdic.
- Episode 8: Glark turns out to be a Big Bad Wannabe looking to conquer Zemuria with archaisms and planning to kill Lavi when she's no longer useful. Someone assassinates Glark around the time Rogan makes his move, but it wasn't Rogan, who finds him dead upon trying to depose him.
- The Worf Barrage: Calvardian tanks and gunships concentrate their fire on Valimar, who shrugs it all off and Rean returns the favor by destroying the tanks and gunships all in one go.
