Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1039 |
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Yeah, the fourth episode unfortunately covers most major events but leaves out the details that made them matter (to a greater extent than in previous episodes). I appreciate the difficulty of cramming everything into a small number of episodes, but they’d be better off excising (more) entire scenes than including shallow or nonsensical versions of them.
For example, the instant-win supply thing is an invention of the adaptation to cut the scene short, but it would have been better to hand-wave the whole thing away with a third-party observer saying “wow, he beat the best student for some reason!” than include an explanation that makes no sense. Or better still, just show the other student complaining after the match. “I’d have won if he’d fought me head-on. I mean, all he did was keep running back and forth to get away, right?” A direct quote from the book that explains things better than their invented battle. (Yang made a focused attack on his supply ships then lured him into overextending himself. Eventually his supplies ran out, forcing a retreat, and the judges awarded the overall victory to Yang.) The El Facil part is a bit tough to adapt because it doesn’t necessarily contain the type of master stroke they want to play up. Yang does make use of the diversion created by his fleeing superiors, but the greater skill involved is just in managing the logistics of the evacuation well (including commandeering civilian vessels) despite being a low-ranking officer abandoned in a bad situation. Afterwards the Alliance needs a hero for propaganda purposes and he best fits the bill. The conversation on the adoption system was good. |
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Chocoreto
Posts: 105 |
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There is also something else about El Facil that wasn't shown here: The difficulty in evacuating wasn't as much as waiting for the right time as what you'll do when the time comes.
In a society like the FPA, which is not fleshed out yet, idealism is a basic foundation and it is impossible for people to think out of the box and live by making bait off of their superior. You wouldn't even think of that now. The military teaches you to obey commands and protect your superiors at all costs. But even so, the brilliance in this was that the ships that fled El Facil could actually be shown on the Empire's radars. Even if the Empire was after Lynch, if they saw the ships fleeing El Facil, they would have killed them off. So Yang didn't even try to conceal the ships. The Empire's Admiral thought that what was coming up on the radar was a bunch of debris or asteroids, because no fleeing ships would ever just appear like that, so he ignored them. It was a really cool example of you preconceptions can make you miss something so obvious. |
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KML777
Posts: 47 |
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I think the point of this episode is that the Alliance and its people tend to exaggerate things. Even Yang thought that his accomplishments are nothing special. But people tend to exaggerate when telling stories, which is why they called him "Hero of El-Facil" for evacuating the populace (Mind you, it's still quite impressive to evacuate the whole 3 million people when you're short-staffed). And the FPA, in need of a heroic figure to rally people on, decided to capitalize on the stories and made Yang the "Hero", even when Yang himself didn't agree on it. |
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#844391
Posts: 517 |
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Ep 5,
I get what this episode was trying to do, show how politicians will try and spin events in war (good or bad) to benefit them by appealing to the people to be patriotic etc. And then showing how patriotism can lead to radical nationalism etc (If only it was so easy to get rid of them with sprinklers in real life). I just wish they hadn't spent a whole episode ramming the point home, I'd like to get back to the space battles. Fortunately it looks like that's going to be happening next week based on the title. |
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Beltane70
 Posts: 3886 |
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I think you’re going to be greatly disappointed with this series as politics makes up about half of the plot of the series. |
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FackuIkari
 Posts: 411 Location: Argentina |
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When we say it's a POLITICAL space opera we mean it |
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Chocoreto
Posts: 105 |
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Maybe the reason this feels so underwhelming, is that the previous version did an extremely good job compared to this. They have tried to retain the serious and "adult" feeling of the series, but this ends up as being too low-key and mellow for LotGH standards. It's the case when something is not as interesting as it should have been and you can't pinpoint why. Most probably a presentation issue. I'm still enjoying the series and the women's character designs are far better than in the original, but if someone wants to get into this, better watch the old one.
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11355 |
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This is confusing the hell out of me. Yang is made a hero to distract the public and provide morale for the nationalist war machine. Then he's attacked - twice - by nationalist terrorists. Not only does he not bother to report these attacks to anyone (you'd think he would for Jessica and Julian's safety if not his own), but what did the nationalists hope to gain had they succeeded? Making martyrs of a national hero and a war widow just because they have some pacifist leanings? How does that help their cause?
The leader of the group is an officer, so it's not like he's unaware of Yang's political importance to the nationalists. What was his end-game in this? It's been a long time since I've seen the OVA series, but while I don't recall all the details, I don't remember ever wondering about anyone's motives or strategies for trying to achieve their goals. This series is really doing a shit job of laying out the Machiavellian plots of all the players. And what the hell kind of "sprinklers" were those? Who waters their lawn with water cannons? |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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They weren't intending to kill Yang, just intimidate him into falling in line. Even if he called the police, Job Trunicht basically controls the Patriotic Knight Corps, he probably has some pull with the law, too. I bet some of the PKC are even in the police forces. Yeah, it's really ungrateful, to the point of even endangering public safety by targeting one of the few competent officers, but hardcore nationalists aren't known for their reasoning skills. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11355 |
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They weren't intending to kill them on the highway by smashing his car against a wall and trying to force him to rear-end another car at high speed?
I'm not sure what you mean by "ungrateful." I don't see what you think they should be but are not grateful to him for. I was just talking about the political implications and how targeting a national hero doesn't do their cause any good, and were it to become known, could do it great harm. I also wasn't thinking of him calling the police, but don't you think he should've told someone in the military, you know, the people who have a vested political and military interest in keeping him safe and healthy when he's off the battlefield, that he was being repeatedly attacked? Or I dunno, maybe exposing Trunicht as the leader? Even if all his household surveillance failed to record his face, outing him to his superiors might at least get them to keep an eye on him. The government might be fine with what the group is doing, but probably not so much when they target their golden boy. If the government does want him out of the way because of his pacifist leanings, all they need to do is reward him with retirement and paying off Julian's schooling. But they clearly need him, alive, and are willing to do whatever they must to keep him on active duty, so they can't possibly approve of the Knights targeting him. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Well, for one, the car chase was added in, it wasn't in the novel or first OVA, they probably just wanted to break up the talking bits.
Second, Job Trunicht is the Secretary of Defense and riding on a popular wave of nationalist sentiment. Even if Yang suspects he's pulling the strings behind the PKC, there's not a lot he can do, especially now that he's been given an assignment off planet. Obviously Trunicht wasn't actually at the scene. He has plausible deniability, there's likely nothing officially tying him to the group. It's what you call a "public secret". And again, the harassment at his home was just an intimidation tactic. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11355 |
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That it wasn't in the novel or OVA is irrelevant to my point that this series is doing a shit job of telling the story. They included it, created it even, and you can't tell me they weren't trying to kill them. If they weren't, that's a piss-poor way of illustrating their non-lethal intentions. And it makes Yang look stupid for keeping these incidents to himself. And what were they going to do if he came out and confronted them as they demanded? Give him a stern talking to and politely leave if they failed to convince him? They might have come intending only to intimidate, but had Yang faced them without capitulating, it would surely have escalated beyond that. I actually wasn't talking about Trunicht - I couldn't remember the guy's name and when you mentioned it, it sounded familiar, so I thought we were talking about the same person. My bad. I think the guy who got unmasked at his house was Captain Christian? Anyway, I thought Yang recognized him (though maybe not), and that's what I meant by outing him to his superiors to at least keep an eye on him or warn him to lay off. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9841 Location: Virginia |
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@Gina Szanboti
A couple of points. First, while the brass do need Yang as a hero, a dead hero is as good as a live one. In this case, Yang as a martyr is better as he can't argue with them. They are not yet aware that he is the only one who can defend against the Empire. So far all he has done is save a bit of the fleet from complete destruction. (I doubt they care about El Facil as he only saved civilians.) Second, groups such as the Patriotic Knights Corp are seldom under good control. They often exceed instructions. They are probably taken directly from Japan's pre WWII past when junior officers assassinated anyone who objected to Japan going into Manchuria and China. They even killed cabinet members and seldom suffered any penalty more than house arrest. Senior officers often protected them, but had little ability to control what they did. The sprinklers were a bit much. However you can think of them as programmable and capable of being aimed. Maybe they wash the house as well as water the grass. 
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11355 |
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That depends on why he's dead. Killed by pro-nationalist terrorists makes the military look weak since they couldn't even protect him on their home turf, and it doesn't help your cause if you're secretly on the side of the terrorists. On the other hand, if he dies trying to capture Iserlohn, it's the clear enemy who's killed him, he remains a hero, and you can loudly bang the drums of vengeance war, without him making pacifist noises. So in that scenario, yes, he'd be more valuable to them dead. And while they may not realize yet that he's their savior, they're still doing their utmost to keep him in the military instead of letting him quietly retire as he wants to.
Most of those assassinations and attempted coups were relatively unsuccessful, and their biggest effect was garnering widespread public sympathy for their cause during their trials, which had more to do with their light sentencing than being protected by their seniors. By 1936, they'd learned to have those trials closed to the public, and once that spotlight was off, the leaders were executed or imprisoned. Of course, by then all the right wing nationalism had already taken hold of most of the country, so it was kinda too late by then. At any rate, with this episode they finally did address Yang telling somebody what was going on and asking for help, so I'm satisfied now. 
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9841 Location: Virginia |
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@Gina Szanboti
If they had killed him, they would have been reported as pro Empire terrorists to the public. In situations like this, the truth is the first casualty. They kept him on active duty because they couldn't explain to the public why they were letting a hero go. One of the big ideas behind the series is that the senior military types do not realize how incompetent they are in both the Empire and the Alliance. They don't realize they need him as a superior tactician and not just a convenient hero or scapegoat. However, you are correct. He was sent to Iserlohn to do the impossible. They expect him to be discredited or dead. |
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