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:
- 82. The Magician Doesn’t Return
- 83. After the Festival
- 84. A Triumphant Return in Disappointment
02:20 – Episode 82
05:20 – Fever Dreams and Ceasefires
08:55 – Going down the list
13:00 – Oberstein gonna Oberstein
15:15 – Off to the peace talks
19:10 – It begins
26:17 – RIP
28:00 – Iro fucks up like the useless sack of shit he is
30:05 – The contrivance of history
34:05 – Historical Tangent (Archduke Franz Ferdinand)
42:28 – Episode 83
49:20 – Schenkopp laying down the law
50:42 – Frederica and Yang Wenli
57:50 – Succession
1:04:37 – Shout outs to Murai
1:08:35 – Episode 84
1:12:00 – People stepping up and holding it together
1:16:50 – Merkatz still here
1:17:52 – Empire Reacts to Yang Wenli
1:22:16 – The Twin Stars
1:26:35 – Mueller and Julian
1:31:25 – Government work
1:34:05 – Is Reinhard okay? Does he have a line of succession?
1:38:30 – Reuenthal gonna Reuenthal
1:39:10 – Mittermeyer gonna Mittermeyer
1:40:45 – Iro fucks it up yet again as per usual
1:42:45 – Earth Cult and Taking Radicalization Seriously
1:48:55 – Legend of the Galactic Heroes relates to real life
1:51:16 – Housekeeping
And don’t forget that Legend of the Galactic Heroes is available for streaming on HIDIVE!
The Glorio Blog 
I get why you’re frustrated with Reinhard but I think you’re not really taking into account him as an actual person (well, as “actual” as a fictional person can be)… or well, not cutting him the same slack you seem to cut others. 😀 In a story that is in many ways about how history is created by humans being humans, Reinhard is, again, just a human. He’s not a revolutionary, he’s barely even a reformer, regardless of all his reforms. He’s a guy who used to have an incredibly strong personal drive to achieve something, and had the skills necessary to achieve them… and now that he did so, at immense personal costs, he’s pretty much out of shits to give, because he doesn’t really care about this part. He’s not a “builder”. He wanted to destroy the previous system, but building a new, fairer one is something he cared about only in theory but the actual implementation is something he finds boring and frustrating.
Reinhard is the type of person who has talents and skills honed in a certain social context, for a certain purpose. He’s not a politician, not a good peacetime statesman. It’s the same with Reuenthal, he’s also someone who is a great general in war, perhaps he might have made a good wartime ruler even, was it not for his messed up personality, or the fact that he just happened to share an era with someone like Reinhard. But he’s not cut out for peacetime.
^To make it clear, I’m not saying that Reinhard doesn’t really care about building a better empire – it’s just that the actual building part is not something he’s particularly interested in. He’s the sort of guy who has all sorts ideas about how things should be, and is willing to fight to create the right circumstances for those ideas to come true, but actually *making* them come true and deal with all the nitty-gritty details and handle people and so on? Nah, others can do that part.
I just got to say you guys have way more self control than me because after seeing 82 at 1 in the morning I couldn’t sleep until I finished the third season.
Also when everyone was telling you guys not to watch previews its definitely because of episode 82.
The way the death happened is one of the better decisions of the author. The classic heroic sacrifice was a) too predictable, b) old man Bucock already beat him to it and c) Yang would hate it. And after all that talk about people getting famous for being the killer, we don’t even know who it was just some unnamed dude.
Rip Blumhardt who was that guy during the first capture of Iserholn that fell down the rope and climbed back up.
Also sucks to be Bucock now that Yang is going to be immortalized and the undefeated champion of democracy when people look at the past for an icon to rally around his last stand will be passed over in favor of Yang who fought the empire and won. Granted Bucock would not mind given his personality.
I actually have the opposite view on who won and lost. Vermillion was definitely an empire victory because at the end of the day, Hilda gave them the big W because she correctly judged the FPA leadership to be the weak link. Reinhard might not like it but as the overall imperial leader its his win. The Corridor battle is a win for Yang because it doesn’t matter that the empire could have easily won when they pulled out the fact is they retreated before winning.
Come to think of it we can also fault Reinhard for not taking care of himself like refusing to eat his food which resulted in him going down in the middle of battle which sparked the dream in the first place. I still love the what would Kircheis do in this situation moments. Reinhard is just constantly reminding us the incomparable lost of the empire’s most moral character so much war and lost of life could have been averted if Kircheis was still alive.
I actually like Reinhard being conflicted in his succession plans. He always had that whimsical and nigh irresponsible belief that only the best should rule so his post death plan for the empire is essentially a civil war between rival pretenders as the natural conclusion to his belief in meritocracy. But in this season we’ve seen him make decisions that contravene that like noting that for long term stability the government should be structured with people that are not the best of the best in mind. Clearly Reinhard recognizes that absolute meritocracy as he views it is not always compatible with the overall health of the empire.