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.
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Opening Song: Sea of Stars
Interlude Song: Fourth Battle of Tiamat (Bolero composed by Maurice Ravel)
Ending Song: Crossing the Bridge of Light (Orchestral Version)
Show Notes
This installment covers episodes:
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- 53. A Sudden Turn
- 54. Sieg Kaiser!
- Bonus – Season 2 Wrap Up
03:12 – Episode 53
06:58 – Hilda’s Bizarre Adventure
13:23 – The FPA Surrenders (Fuck Job Truniht)
20:11 – Setting Precedent
27:11 – Operation Sherwood
31:18 – Episode 54
34:23 – The Meeting
41:48 – Occupation and Aftermath
49:55 – Boris Konev and Phezzan
52:14 – What is the Earth Cult’s deal??
58:04 – Coronation
1:00:50 – B R E A K
1:01:32 – Season 2 Wrap-Up, plus guest stars!
1:04:30 – Thoughts on Season 2?
1:10:25 – Favorite episodes or moments?
1:24:28 – Baseless Speculation
1:39:12 – Who lives and dies?
1:52:13 – Yang & Democracy VS Reinhard & Autocracy
2:19:30 – S E C O N D B R E A K
2:20:01 – What is your ideal Legend of the Galactic Heroes spinoff?
2:37:00 – Who voiced who?
2:49:25 – Housekeeping
And don’t forget that Legend of the Galactic Heroes is available for streaming on HIDIVE!
The Glorio Blog 
One of the neat parts that the series did is to not draw attention to stuff low key happening on scene. When Reinhard was sick and a doctor was checking up on him his personal guard had his gun drawn and was hiding it behind his back just waiting for any sign from the doctor trying to pull something. The most obvious one though was when Reinhard refused to retreat his assistant guy and the same head bodyguard looked at each other and nodded and attempted to manhandle Reinhard into escaping.
The Yang and Reinhard talk is probably my favorite scene for season two.
One of the things that I realized about operation Ragnarok was how little in civilian deaths it involved. Aside from people like Reinhard’s pretend kircheis Emil dying because they are on military ships, the vast vast majority that died were in the military. The largest harm done to civilians was probably at Phezzan when they occupied it and the FPA capital when the empire did a victory lap but its still not as bad as entire planets getting the westerland treatment.
In echo of Yang’s concern of setting a precedent, it feels like this campaign in the far future in this setting will be held up as an example and used by a more warlike ruling class to say that a “clean” war is possible.
I think the lack of civilian casualties is a consequence of being a science fiction show, since it means most of the fighting is happening literally hundreds of thousands of miles from anywhere there might be civilians, barring – as you said – planetary occupation or large bases like Iserlohn. So instead we’re getting all these shots of military personnel (rather than civilians) being vivisected and exploding and shit to remind us of the human cost of war, I guess.
Yeah, I imagine few civilians died in ship to ship combat during WW2 as well. It all depends on the theater of war.