Legend of the Galactic Heroes

Name(s): LotGH / Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu / 銀河英雄伝説 / Gin’eiden / GinEiDen / Heldensagen Vom Kosmosinsel / Les Héros de la Galaxie
Format: Original video animation [OVA] (110 episodes)
Release Date(s): December 21, 1988 – March 11, 1997
Studio(s): Kitty Film Mitaka Studio (Seasons 1-3) / K-Factory (Season 4)

Legend of the Galactic Heroes Review

Everything people say about Legend of the Galactic Heroes is true, except for the notion that it’s flawless. Nothing is, but it gets particularly annoying to me when something is held up too high only because it carries itself in a classy, intelligent manner but the construction of the show itself doesn’t always reflect that. I realize that’s a kneejerk response to the fanbase, but I think it’s worth pointing out.

My particular problems with this one are that the two sides aren’t equally represented in the narrative. Reinhard and his crew have so much more character depth and motivation than Yang Wenli’s, who only suddenly patches together a rival cast of previously minor characters and others that come out of nowhere, and they never catch up to the likes of Reuenthal, Oberstein, etc. This unbalance makes Wenli’s side far less interesting and is possibly the biggest part of the narrative.

Many of the ship battles also come as a sore spot. When they’re framework for character development and building philosophy, they’re great, but there’s still a huge amount of dead space given to admirals shouting orders to their crews that are entirely vague to us because we often don’t have the entire scale of the battle to understand the significance of a move, and the visuals often do a poor job of showing the state of the overall battle as its just identical looking shots of unidentifiable ships shooting lasers at each other.

The storytelling in these battles leaves a lot to be desired, and it doesn’t take long before watching an admiral shout to circle around and flank the enemy, watching triangles move around in an undetailed map of the battle, and watching still ships shooting at each other and exploding gets completely uninteresting. When the battles shine is when the dialogue describing the battles, the only thing we can rely on to fully convey what’s going on, isn’t so rote. So strategies that involve the specific landscape or in some cases the psychology of the other character shine, but given the frequency of the ship battles these moments don’t come often enough.

There are definitely some potent philosophical ideas brought up in this show that stuck with me, but for the most part I wasn’t naïve enough for much of it to be new information. While a noble cause, rattling off the problems of democracy isn’t any more new to me than another anime preaching the power of friendship, and LotGH can really beat you over the head with some of this shit that anyone who has access to the internet should be conscious of. I wouldn’t call it sanctimonious, just repetitive.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes Verdict

Despite my griping, I do think this is an excellent, standout show that I would recommend to nearly anyone, but it isn’t some work of genius beyond reproach. I want to reject the fanbase that insists its objectively the best anime ever made simply because it takes itself so seriously and deals with such high concepts. There are more ways to reach people emotionally, and even in this series alone there are better ways.