We continue 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 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
This installment covers episodes:
- 7. The Capture of Iserlohn
- 8. Cool, Clear, Cybernetic Eyes
- 9. The Klopstock Incident
00:33 – Very Professional Intros
01:10 – Iro shilled the podcast to a number of people at WorldCon 2018
03:45 – Give us money please
04:18 – Episode 7: The Capture of Iserlohn
05:36 – And the Oscar goes to the Rosen Ritter
11:09 – High Frequency Battle Axes
14:00 – The Rosen Ritter are smooth as butter and jam
16:35 – Melee Combat in space
23:31 – Yang Wenli is Sad then Mad
26:05 – The Weight of Responsibility
29:48 – Episode 8: Cool, Clear, Cybernetic Eyes
31:45 – Paul von Oberstein is stone cold
35:40 – Reinhard’s Ambition
43:08 – The Galactic Kaiser, Friedrich IV
44:40 – Episode 9: The Klopstock Incident
46:53 – Fancy Parties
49:33 – Reinhard doesn’t want to go to his classmate’s birthday party
52:30 – Kircheis’s Ornate Sterling Silver Laptop
56:33 – Kircheis is a good guy
1:04:00 – Closing Thoughts and What’s Next
1:08:17 – Housekeeping
And don’t forget that Legend of the Galactic Heroes is available for streaming on HIDIVE!
The Glorio Blog 
(Sorry for spamming your comment sections, I’m just kind of happy to run my mouth about LoGH… I hope I’m not being annoying!)
Re: fidelity to the novel, that’s a bit tricky. The OVA was created for fans of the novel, but while it’s a very faithful adaptation, it does have a bit of life on its own. Mostly in the form of additions and expansions, and “externalizing” what was originally narration, internal monologues, etc. But there’s also quite a bit of deviations, mostly in the first “season”. These usually (with some notable exceptions) exist to pad out runtime without downtime, and/or to add some action, and it’s usually done with a good understanding of the source material. Case in point, the Kastropf rebellion is like 2-3 paragraphs in the book. The OVA expands it in a way that is different than what happens in the book, but it manages to keep the same spirit and end on the same conclusions and consequences, while also sneaking in some worldbuilding and plot elements. Similarly, in the book the capture of Iserlohn by the Rosenritters happens very quickly, and notably without bloodshed. The OVA definitely does away with that, and adds all sorts of fun action, but the characters keep being in character, and the end result is pretty much the same. From all the 110 episodes, there’s only one point where I feel that the OVA actually screwed up adapting something… because that involves messing with a very important characterization point.
(As for DNT, it tried to stay more faithful to the book, but IMO it kind of stumbled on the writers not really understanding how to write this kind of story and these sort of characters, and how to pace this story in ways that takes advantage of the great cast and world. And let’s not even mention their deviations/added expansions, like the intro of the Rosenritters… that is original material in the OVA as well, but there it’s so much more in line with what LoGH is like.)
By the way, if you do read the novel please don’t hold the quality of the English text against it (as some have done, apparently not quite realizing that they’re reading a translation). I was all set to support the English release of the novels because they’re awesome and people should read them. But the quality of the English translation is tragic. The first three books read like someone’s rough first draft; I stopped buying them after that, but from what I’ve heard the continuing volumes have a better flow but contain really baffling and rather serious mistranslations.