The beginner's guide to Legend of the Galactic Heroes

[kajornwan]

This post is in order because until my entire f-list starts watching this best anime ever made I find it my responsibility to keep the world informed. So if you have been brainwashed by my marketing attempt and are interested to watch now or some time later, here is the guide which you will need (that I wished I had when I started).

Comments

Additional rules

[delwynmarch]

DO be 110% ready to focus exclusively on what's going on the second the episode starts. They won't give you a recap of the previous episodes, but they totally expect you to remember everything that happened and to be able to just jump into the action right away. I've only watched the first 26 episodes (plus a couple movies), but I've had to restart an episode several times because I wasn't actually ready-ready.

DON'T expect to be doing anything else on top of watching an episode. As I said, all your attention is going to be swallowed into just following what's going on.

DON'T PANIC :D !

DO rewind as often as necessary.

DO pause the episode and go check one of the above posters if you feel too lost. Getting momentarily lost (again and again and again) while following LoGH is the norm, not the exception.

And for the soft-hearted like me: DO be ready to cry at the end of an episode for characters you'd never met at the beginning, and will never see again. Human lives of ordinary people MATTER in this anime, both individual human

Re: Additional rules

[kajornwan]

True. I often wonder how it was possible that they produce a show 110 episodes long and yet every one is packed so tight with info. It never feels stretching. You almost feel you wish they'd stretched a few scenes a bit longer because.. Wait I didn't get what you mean. Can you just give me some time? Damn it!

And no shit you can't do anything else. I had to pause just to answer my kids simple questions because you get distracted from reading subs one second you could miss whyyy they are going to war!

Have you seen that part when the soldier was showing off picture of his new born baby and wife and seconds later *boom* the kid never gets to meet daddy. You have to love how they insist on throwing things like that at you every chance they get. It's marvelously bold.

Re: Additional rules

[delwynmarch]

You almost feel you wish they'd stretched a few scenes a bit longer

"Almost"? Fuck "almost"! This is the first anime where I actively WANT recaps at the beginning of each episode, freeze frames every time they introduce a new character, visual flashbacks anytime they mention an important past event, and yes, strrrrrrretched scenes! I'm sorry, but there's no way I can read the subtitle giving the name of the new character, the OTHER subtitle translating whatever is being said (because they are ALWAYS talking whenever introducing someone, OF COURSE!), AND look at the face of said new character long enough to memorise it and attach to the new name, ALL AT ONCE! *cries hysterically*

Seriously, you know you've been overworking when you get ONE episode with a few flashbacks (ep 26, not to name it), and you feel like the episode is nothing but flashbacks even though tons of things are still happening :P

Wait I didn't get what you mean. Can you just give me some time? Damn it!*sighs

Re: Additional rules

[kajornwan]

This is the first anime where I actively WANT recaps at the beginning of each episode, freeze frames every time they introduce a new character, visual flashbacks anytime they mention an important past event, and yes, strrrrrrretched scenes!

No shit. And that's just for the sake of remembering who the fuck we are talking about. Then in the middle of it, while I'm still trying to figure out who Negroponty was, if I had seen him before, and which side of the multiple corrupted government entities he's on, they throw this conversation (that I have been dissecting for about a week and still can't figure out what it means) at you and expect you to understand it in precisely 21 seconds, then yes, we are going to move on to the next difficult topic, thank you very much:

Yang: A nation doesn’t create individuals by cellular division. Instead, it is individuals with autonomous intent who gather to establish a nation. In a democratic society, it is axiomatic as to which one is the master and which the servant

Re: Additional rules

[delwynmarch]

Yang: A nation doesn’t create individuals by cellular division. Instead, it is individuals with autonomous intent who gather to establish a nation. In a democratic society, it is axiomatic as to which one is the master and which the servant.... Wow. Okay. I'd been under the illusion that Philosophy was something that newcomers were supposed to take their time to examine, and that they were expected to re-read each text several times before being sure they understand it somewhat properly. But in LoGH universe, it's apparently something as easy to understand as, well, pie or cake :P Oooo-kay, then, that should be fun :D

Re: Additional rules

[kajornwan]

But in LoGH universe, it's apparently something as easy to understand as, well, pie or cake

Yang does that a lot. T_T

... Though why they couldn't actually say that instead of going all Philosophical Bullshit on us, I don't know :P !

Oh now I see *cries*. I feel so dumb. But yes, why couldn't they just say THAT!!!

And Reinhard didn't fuck up, by the way, since he followed Oberstein's advice, and as you yourself keep saying, Oberstein is never wrong ;)
Well, I did mean fucked up in terms of him and Kircheis. Because they originally wanted to do things differently but they were too naive to understand that you can't get there without some blood on your hands. The abuse Tanaka Yoshiki gives his characters is just plain awesome really. Brutal truth. I have a feeling Oberstein is him in the series lol

Kircheis would have favoured the more compassionate one and argued that maybe they'd find a way to also make it efficient down the road (which was actually highly unlikely, thus why Oberstein is never wrong Exactly, and again why

Re: Additional rules

[delwynmarch]

LOL, don't cry about that Philosophical Bullshit :) See, there's a trick: I was actually trained to deal with that ;) In France, we have to study Philosophy during our last year of high school. I don't know how it goes now, but back in my time, the Literature students got 8 hours of it per week, and us Science nerds got 3 hours. It was supposed to teach us how to think and reason and blah blah, but at least us Science nerds just took it as another thing to learn by heart and parrot back, with a side dose of "how to bullshit your way through any argument even when you have no idea what you're talking about" :P To give you an idea of how insane the whole thing was: it was physically impossible, time-wise, to study anywhere close to the whole program in the time we had. Some teachers tried their best to guess what would come up at the (national) final exams (the "Bac"), and focused on those topics. The rest of the teachers just taught whatever they liked best, or in the case of my teacher, what was least likely to bore a bunch of Science

Re: Additional rules

[ext_3031983]

It's been ages, but I just saw this--thanks for the shoutout! :D

Re: Additional rules

[delwynmarch]

I don't do French =_= Everything sounds so incredibly silly in French :P

the Westerland bombing is clearly the Hiroshima # II (its always a recurring theme in Anime isnt it )

it s the same excuses they gave for the bombing

Not quite! Reinhard didn't order the Westerland bombing to make the war end faster (as supposedly happened with Hiroshima). He only allowed his enemies to bomb Westerland without intervening to protect or evacuate Westerland. That's not at all on the same level!

Oh sof hearted Del I have to ask ,did you cried rivers when you watched FMA 1srt anime like me ?

I never watched either FMA animes :P I only read the manga.