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

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 Kircheis had to die. Reinhard would have listened to him too much because he cares too much, Kircheis would have listened to his conscience too much and realized too late that it will bring Reinhard down unless he's willing to throw his conscience away for the sake of Reinhard and do everything necessary. The masochistic part of me almost want to see Kircheis live just to face that dilemma. And knowing his loyalty to Reinhard (especially if you watch Gaiden), the angst that comes with it would have been so fucking satisfying. The most beautiful part of it is that I know in the end he would choose Reinhard over everything and loses himself in the process. I wonder if he can live with it though, and how? After watching GAiden you really do realize how strong Kircheis is mentally and that plays such a big part in this scenario *drools*

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 nerds to tears :P Then came the Bac, where you got a choice between three completely different topics: 2 were essays based on a question or a sentence, and the third one was a commentary on a text they gave you. If you were lucky, you knew anything related to ONE of these topics :P If not, well, too bad, you just had to bullshit your way through it somehow :D Me, for example, I chose the commentary because it was the only thing vaguely related to something we had actually studied in class. And I remember that one of the two essays was, I kid you not, "What is the difference between knowledge and know-how?" And to give you an idea of what kind of hopes we had for that exam: I ended up with 08/20 (yes, 8, not 18), and I was overjoyed because it was the exact double of what I had hoped for :D ! So yeah, once you've gone through that kind of nonsense, Yang's Philosophy Bullshit is kinda familiar :P

The abuse Tanaka Yoshiki gives his characters is just plain awesome really. Brutal truth.

I'd say that ultimately, LoGH is not so much about its characters and its stories at all, but about Life itself, and about Humanity. And both Life and Humanity are heartless, cruel bastards, so it makes sense that Tanaka would act that way towards his characters.

The masochistic part of me almost want to see Kircheis live just to face that dilemma.

It would have turned ugly one way or the other, and probably would have been even more heartbreaking than what happened. Young idealistic geniuses being confronted to the harsh cruelty of Real Life very rarely turn out well.

The most beautiful part of it is that I know in the end he would choose Reinhard over everything and loses himself in the process. I wonder if he can live with it though, and how?

Dissociation. Either actual psychotic dissociation, which signifies the end of his sanity, or moral dissociation, which can lead to terrifying results in the choice of policies - even more terrifying that anything Oberstein proposes, because at least Oberstein keeps his eyes fully open (ha!) to the consequences of every option he offers.