From the Bookshelf: Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Endurance
In getting to read the Legend of the Galactic Heroes novels in translation at last, I am always sort of conscious of having managed to see their anime adaptation first. (At times, too, buying the novels does sort of seem a no doubt inadequate effort to try and "make up" for just how I saw the anime...) At the end of the second novel, I was as inclined as anything to keep seeing the story as pausing at a moment of great impact, but remembering a change in the anime's opening and closing credits (after a good number of episodes spun out of two novels) was one more sign of that. As the third novel picked up, I could see the Galactic Empire's protagonist Reinhard von Lohengramm as having been isolated by that, with his not nearly as totipotent counterpart on the other side of the interstellar space opera war, Free Planets Alliance Admiral Yang Wen-li, isolated in turn by being hauled before a kangaroo board of inquiry. I can understand this steady emphasis on the degradation of the Alliance (with an enigmatic third party meddling all the while) troubling people who might read the novel now; at the same time, I'm conscious of having become more dubious about invocations of "front-line military leaders who possess inbuilt dignity and reasonableness" since I first read the Robotech novelizations long years ago. The one point that might be made in favour of Legend of the Galactic Heroes could be that by this point in the story, the aggressive Alliance commanders have been killed off.
In the meantime, the space opera content of the series keeps up as the Empire works out how to put engines on a battle station and sets it in motion against the ultimate space fortress of Iserlohn, captured by Yang in the first novel. I did keep reflecting on the mirrored "liquid metal" armour of the anime turning out to have been its own invention, as if to downplay obvious associations, but wound up realising I'd already managed to mention that. It did make for a change from the now seemingly more prominent speculation on "a revitalized enlightened despotism versus a decaying democracy"; I did get to thinking a bit how, as works of fiction can set their own terms, they can avoid problems with "expectations of a declared historical figure" having to face reality.
While I'm able now to realise how each novel in this series gets to develop and resolve its own significant events that were more spread out in the anime, there was enough anticipation of plots still to unfold in its closing pages that the first three novels announced to be translated would indeed have seemed unsatisfying had that been all we'd got over here. Fortunately, they do seem to have sold well enough for there to already have been the announcement of more of them (if still seemingly not "all" yet); there's another preview at the back of this volume. Aware of where the story goes from here, I could pick up on some of the subtler foreshadowing, and even hope we'd get to see it in turn.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/272290.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.
In the meantime, the space opera content of the series keeps up as the Empire works out how to put engines on a battle station and sets it in motion against the ultimate space fortress of Iserlohn, captured by Yang in the first novel. I did keep reflecting on the mirrored "liquid metal" armour of the anime turning out to have been its own invention, as if to downplay obvious associations, but wound up realising I'd already managed to mention that. It did make for a change from the now seemingly more prominent speculation on "a revitalized enlightened despotism versus a decaying democracy"; I did get to thinking a bit how, as works of fiction can set their own terms, they can avoid problems with "expectations of a declared historical figure" having to face reality.
While I'm able now to realise how each novel in this series gets to develop and resolve its own significant events that were more spread out in the anime, there was enough anticipation of plots still to unfold in its closing pages that the first three novels announced to be translated would indeed have seemed unsatisfying had that been all we'd got over here. Fortunately, they do seem to have sold well enough for there to already have been the announcement of more of them (if still seemingly not "all" yet); there's another preview at the back of this volume. Aware of where the story goes from here, I could pick up on some of the subtler foreshadowing, and even hope we'd get to see it in turn.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/272290.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.