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EP. REVIEW: Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These

I'm getting flashbacks of my childhood when I saw the phantom menace. Came expecting space battles, get political debates instead. I'm wondering if this series is going to end with the next major war just about to start,but we never actually see any of it.

I'm getting flashbacks of my childhood when I saw the phantom menace. Came expecting space battles, get political debates instead. I'm wondering if this series is going to end with the next major war just about to start,but we never actually see any of it.

Ep 10,

I think they're laying it on a bit thick as far as how ignorant to make the side characters in this series


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#844391 wrote:

Ep 10, I think they're laying it on a bit thick as far as how ignorant to make the side characters in this series [...]

The thing is, there have been many similarly incompetent politicians and soldiers throughout history. The events of the Allied invasion of the Empire are based directly upon historical parallels like the French or German invasions of Russia. The whole of LotGH is a big historical analogy and most things in it are based on one or more real life events.

Fork was actually much smarter and more competent sounding here than he was in the OVA. He’s still totally punchable though due to his arrogance and that Kamiya VA (what a casting decision! I like it though).

Manami-san wrote:

#844391 wrote: Ep 10, I think they're laying it on a bit thick as far as how ignorant to make the side characters in this series [...] The thing is, there have been many similarly incompetent politicians and soldiers throughout history. The events of the Allied invasion of the Empire are based directly upon historical parallels like the French or German invasions of Russia. The whole of LotGH is a big historical analogy and most things in it are based on one or more real life events. Fork was actually much smarter and more competent sounding here than he was in the OVA. He’s still totally punchable though due to his arrogance and that Kamiya VA (what a casting decision! I like it though).

I'd like to echo and add to this a little. I've seen this sort of criticism directed against this show often that some of the side characters are incompetent and therefore unbelievable. Not to put too fine a point on this but that kind of criticism is missing the mark completely imo. They are 100% believable exactly because theyre not all clever master strategists. History is littered with exactly the kind of rash, stupid or downright absurd assumptions about how a strategy might play out. And it usually ends in blodshed. This episode highlights this at various points so much so that they might as well be verbatim quotes from history books. Supply problems get heavily underestimated, the own force, its motivation heavily overestimated etc., it is all there in our history. Just one example from this episode: Falk talks about how the citizens of the empire will be happy that theyre free of the empire and Yang doubts that very much. The exact same thing was assumed not 15 years ago when the US invaded Iraq ("they'll greet us as liberators") and everyone knows how that turned out. So I'm baffled how viewers can say the incompetence portrayed here is unrealistic. Exactly this is happening over and over throughtout our history up to the wars that are raging right now. How can it be any more realistic?

The only way this criticism is somewhat reasonable to me is that a story about someone superior handily defeating incompetents is less than compelling. But a) thats not how it is here, b) that is not what this story is about and c) i dont agree with the premise. Thats like saying the life of Alexander the Great or Dschingis Khan is any less compelling because they hardly lost any battles and were giants of their time. The opposite is true to my mind. Add to this story being very relative in its outlook and this is one of the best stories told in Anime, at least to me

And the episode does throw out some interesting tones of Reinhard seemingly underestimating himself even in the face of Yang's negativity.
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Ep 11,

SERIOUSLY?! They have to do whatever that moron Falk says because he may have a mental breakdown when someone calls him out on his bullshit. They're going to let the fate 30 million men ride on that?! And the supreme commander is too busy napping to pay attention to the forces he's responsible for?!

Building on my previous criticisms of incompetence, I wouldn't mind it if there was only one or two reoccurring characters that were incompetent. A good example of this would be Iok Kujan from Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron blood orphans. The guy is an idiot who is constantly rushing into battle over and over again and almost always getting his followers killed, only to swear to avenge them and repeat the process over again. However, he was one of the only characters like that in the series, and even the people he worked with knew how bad he was.

In this series, almost every other character aside from the main cast is an incompetent dolt. Most of them end up getting killed off in some way due to their own actions but then a bunch of replacements show up out of the woodwork. It doesn't even feel like Yang is fighting against the Imperials but basically just trying to keep the fleet from falling apart due to the actions of their higher ups. They haven't fired a shot and are already dealing with riots from the planets they've taken and are practically having to mutiny to avoid having their men starve.

At this point I'm actually cheering the Imperials on simply because they actually have someone smart calling the shots and actually have an effective strategy in place for waging this war. Hell, even the imperial bureaucrats in charge who don't like Reinhard at least recognize that he's a brilliant commander so they keep him in command. Granted, his plan was obvious enough that even the idiots on the other side recognized it but in all their wisdom decided to continue to walk right into it because "honor, glory, stupidity".

Ep 11,

SERIOUSLY?! They have to do whatever that moron Falk says because he may have a mental breakdown when someone calls him out on his bullshit. They're going to let the fate 30 million men ride on that?!

And the supreme commander is too busy napping to pay attention to the forces he's responsible for?!

It doesn't even feel like Yang is fighting against the Imperials but basically just trying to keep the fleet from falling apart due to the actions of their higher ups.

At this point I'm actually cheering the Imperials on simply because they actually have someone smart calling the shots and actually have an effective strategy in place for waging this war.

@#844391

This is the end of volume 1 of the novel and the end of active fighting for awhile. Once Yang gets the remnants of the Alliance back to their own territory the shooting war goes on intermission. Both sides become involved with "internal" affairs.