And so begins our maiden voyage across the sea of stars, where Gee and Iro watch the seminal 1988-1997 Legend of the Galactic Heroes OVA a few episodes at a time. Keep an eye out for this podcast between main installments of The GLORIO Chat – every two weeks or so – as we work our way through the history books.
Opening Song: Sea of Stars
Ending Song: Crossing the Bridge of Light (Orchestral Version)
Show Notes
For our inaugural podcast, we cover episodes:
- 1. In the Eternal Night
- 2. The Battle of Astarte
- 3. Birth of the 13th Fleet
We also talk briefly about the first film, My Conquest is the Sea of Stars; and the recent TV anime, Die Neue These.
01:15 – Introductions and a brief history of Legend of the Galactic Heroes
04:50 – Episode 1
08:55 – Fezzan is kinda sketchy
14:00 – Officers and their Space Steak
17:55 – Episode 2
21:45 – Episode 3
23:00 – RIP Jean Robert Lap
26:00 – Jessica Edwards and the political rally
33:44 – Applicability
36:40 – Job Trunicht’s Amazing Office
45:00 – Thoughts moving forward
56:50 – Closing
And don’t forget that Legend of the Galactic Heroes is available for streaming on HIDIVE!
The Glorio Blog 
Great new series! I hope you’ll manage to see the OVA through to its end, heh. One of the things that I resent Die Neue These for is that it completely wasted its time – the story of LoGH gets really good at the point where Die Neue These will end. Incidentally, that is also where Reinhard really grows into his own and starts to really shine. Reinhard has a really amazing character arc, and the Empire has a really amazing cast, and it’s kind of a shame that people who only watched Die Neue These will never get to know them.
By the way, about Phezzan – it’s semi-autonomous Imperial territory that exists as a kinda-sorta semi-neutral territory where the Empire and the FPA can conduct trade and whatnot. That’s why Iserlohn is the only way between the Empire and the FPA, the FPA can’t bring its army to, never mind through, Phezzan.
Also, when you touch on the current relevance of the Die Neue These version, it’s good to remember that both the OVA and the TV series are adaptations of the same novel. Both shows have their fair share of original content and other deviations, but generally the OVA has a much better grasp on the kind of story that LoGH is, and its original content meshes a lot better with the novel’s story and mood, and the characters in general, than DNT’s often really weird additions (re: the introduction of the Rosenritters, for example).
(I think the OVA also juggles the characters much better – DNT has a really weird sense of pacing where characters who are not all that important get a lot more screentime than characters who are going to be really important. You also touched on this with Lapp, but it was also the case of Fahrenheit who got an inordinate amount of screentime in the TV show for someone who is ultimately a minor character, while characters like Reuenthal or Rubinsky barely get any screentime even though they’re both very important. The OVA also made the great decision to introduce Attenborough much sooner, so Yang has someone to bounce off of and banter with.)
Hey, thanks for the comment! While I share your enthusiasm, but don’t go telling us too much, buddy; we’re only a couple episodes in, and we’d rather react to everything totally fresh. Can’t say I quite want to know this early who exactly is more or less important than the rest, in such a case.
Speaking of, part of what I actually like more about Die Neue These (based on just what we’ve seen, of course) is that it did flesh out characters like Lapp a bit more. When you’re working at such a massive galactic scale, zooming in on “unimportant” individuals whose actions still nevertheless have consequences helps lend some weight to proceedings, you know?
At any rate, we hope you’ll stick with us, even though it’ll take a while to work through the whole thing.
Oops – sorry if I was spoilerish, I tried not to say anything specific! But you did say you watched Die Neue These so I kind of took that for granted. About Phezzan, if I remember correctly they talked about its status in the first episode of the OVA.
Regarding “unimportant” characters, I completely agree and actually LoGH does an absolutely stellar job with this concept, the OVA as well as the novel. But there are “unimportant” characters, and characters who are really, actually not important enough to warrant more than a certain amount of attention/screentime. DNT had a really weird pacing considering its episode count, and I think it made a pretty terrible use of it, with a very slow pacing (it’s trying to go with the same speed as the OVA, but while the OVA had all those episodes, DNT had only 12, plus 12 more if we count the upcoming movies) and I’m just really salty that LoGH newbies who only watched DNT won’t know the great story, and won’t get to know the amazing cast, that LoGH has.
Anyway, good luck with the OVA! As much as I love the novel, the OVA is really a superb adaptation that is definitely worth the time and effort one puts into watching it.
Is there a schedule for which episodes you’ll cover each episode? Will it be three per fortnight? I’m planning on watching along, so it would be great to know how many episodes I should get through before the next discussion. Thanks!
We’re roughly aiming at 3 episodes per podcast and one podcast every two weeks, but the realities of life have already forced us to shake up that schedule. All we can say for sure right now is that the second installment of the podcast will cover Episodes 4-6, and that it’ll be out soon. Otherwise, we’ll try to mention any changes to the formula in each post.
Brilliant, thanks!
Aw yeah, I’m about to dive into the world of Legend of the Galactic Heroes myself, so this should be fun to follow along with 🙂
Glad to have you aboard!