Otakuism

Watching Legend of the Galactic Heroes

Two episodes in and I love it. There’s no more dynamic an opening than a giant space battle. I find it rather funny that the opening narration of the very first episode of a show about war basically says how war is meaningless and will ultimately be forgotten. Even Yang Wenli and Reinhard seem to know that, Yang probably more so, but the battle at the moment is more pressing.

LOGH immediately sets itself with two very different sides at war. In one corner it’s the Space Prussians - is there a better kind of prussian? - better known as theGalactic Empire. They have snazzy uniforms, cool german names (cause german is the most badass language ever), and everything from their ships to their houses possesses a unique 18th century austerity.

In the other corner there’s Democracy InAction, or the Free Planets Alliance. They wear french caps (yay revolution), have garish mechanical design (boo capitalism), name their ships after ancient greeks (yay oligarchy), and use fighters called spartanians. Probably trying to evoke the image of Sparta defender of Athenian democracy from the Persians, rather than the Sparta that fought meaningless wars for a century that led to Greece being conquered.

LOGH is one of the fews anime I’ve seen that actually feels like a proper space opera, partly because classical music is the soundtrack. But there’s also the distances involved, the grand movements of people, and the death star-like Iserlohn, covered in a sea of molten metal with its own patented planet smasher, Thor’s Hammer (yay norse mythology). Of course, LOGH is still a 110-episode OVA with multiple movies and side-stories, so this may be quite a long journey.