Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - Intrigue

Episode 48

As a major cinematic climax of a blockbuster franchise film I could presumably have watched in theaters, last week's episode of LOGH DNT - Intrigue pretty well did the job. It delivered a ridiculous tactical spaceship-battle-cum-sword-fight, and even made it work within the confines of this series thanks to in-universe reasoning for that sort of distractionary bombast. Coming off such an indulgence and into a final episodic stretch perfectly arranged to function as a season finale or movie ending, this last episode delivered with its established panache. It wraps things without repeating the previous season's open ending, where it's obvious more episodes are waiting in the wings…mostly.

The overall tone of this content feels appropriate at the start. I'll bet that big sweeping opening shot with all the CGI spaceships looked pretty dang cool on the big screen. There's something salient about the Imperial soldiers reacting to the news of their impending occupation of Fezzan with what feels like genuine engagement. Indeed they have drunk from the well of Reinhard's reforms and the propaganda and believe themselves to be the 'good guys' of this conflict. Are they? Even Yoshiki Tanaka's often empire-sympathetic tone would never dare assign hard-coded moral value to historically-contextualized maneuvers. However, it's fair to say that occupying a nominally-unrelated civilian territory to conquer an enemy is not the most altruistic tactic, no matter how above-board Mittermeyer tries to be about it.

It's a procedural sequence of events that could fall back into that more dry documentary style if not for Intrigue's insistence on still dialing up the drama here. Simple shots of Mittermeyer strolling down a hallway are transformed by Production I.G into cinematic efforts worthy of The West Wing. Segments of Julian and Machungo's adventures in vacating the Alliance offices of Fezzan are cut down or glossed over to move at a quicker clip while keeping us in line with the vital information. Rubinsky's study, wherein he has his final, inevitable confrontation with Kesserling, is dripping atmosphere. Here, we find out that this version of Kesserling had glasses as part of his design so he could dramatically whip them off as he grows unhinged. It's all astonishingly amusing stuff, even if Kesserling getting taken out by soldiers with stealth tech is, technically, less impressively dramatic than a whole wall exploding behind him. Maybe they felt they had to dial it down a bit after all those other embellishments.

Much of this last episode speaks to what's worked about Intrigue so far, especially compared to the previous Die Neue These installments. Even with denser dalliances in space, sticking closer to the ground and taking time to hear these characters talk and interact with each other while juicing it up with fancy backdrops and direction works in context. And here at the end, they knew to stick with that style instead of doing something that would be a tone-killing distraction that skimmed over critical—hey wait, what's that? By gawd, that's Yoshimitsu Shimoyama's music! Oh no!

Look, I get it. The narrator is a crucial part of the overall storytelling style of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, arguably central to the historical lens it presents its plot through. But there is a time and a place, and this time and place is practically a repeat of the guy chattering over last season's finale in a way that dang-near wrecked the tone and pacing. It's especially egregious because he comes in when Mittermeyer orders the execution of the soldiers who assaulted a civilian. It's central to demonstrating how the commander's uncompromising approach to occupying Fezzan shows his seriousness and wins much of the populace over. You need to let that scene play out as it happens, with the characters speaking for themselves. This scene was designed to work perfectly with how Intrigue had presented itself, absent the intrusive narrator.

Even the random soldiers chattering about the event are supposed to be there to convey the directly-stated parallels these circumstances have with Mittermeyer and Reuenthal's origin story we saw back at the beginning of Collision. Absent that, the strong circularity of the narrative (kind of a thing in the sort of story that LOGH is) becomes muddled, and it feels like we're just skipping over it all to save time.

It could be argued that it's not fair for me to put so much priority on comparing Die Neue These to the old version of Legend of the Galactic Heroes as an opposing point of criticism. You don't even need a direct comparison to realize that this show fumbles things at the finish line here— Anyone can see that the execution scene goes by too fast and glosses over the content with overt narration. You don't need to know that there was originally extra material setting up where Julian and Machungo go from here to pick up on the fact that they evaporate from the narrative a few minutes into this episode's version of events.

I still think Die Neue These does a lot of things well. I love seeing Reinhard's crew have their meetings in an improvised-use hotel hall, with the tables hastily set up like a first-time business convention. Much more glamorous than talking shop in the back of a limo. And setting the navigation room of the final scene in a big holographic hallway for Reinhard to vamp around in makes for that much more cinematic take on his coveting of the galaxy for the sake of his boyfriend's dying wish. I wish we hadn't had to skim over so much other material. It is just as essential to get there. Intrigue is lucky that its journey in getting here, and presentation of previous parts, was worth it on its own because if I'd known this is how they were going to handle the finale, I might have been happier to stop on the over-the-top space sword fight. At least no one talked over that scene.

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Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - Intrigue is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is a freewheeling Fresno-based freelancer with a love for anime and a shelf full of too many Transformers. He can be found spending way too much time on his Twitter, and irregularly updating his blog.