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Legend of the Galactic Heroes
銀河英雄伝説
1988 · TV series · 25 min episodes · 4 seasons
AnimationDramaScience FictionFantasyWar
War rages between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance. With two new brilliant young leaders at the helm, anything can happen in this military space opera.
6 positive1 neutralfrom 7 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
> Gone are the traditional awe-inspiring scifi, in are the post-apocalyptical dystopia where teenagers are being oppressed by old people and the teenagers have to overturn the old ruling class.
There have been two Gundam series and two Gundam movies in the past year alone. Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Yamato and Macross have all had movies come out within the past two years. Just because they disappear within the flood of content doesn't mean that they don't exist.
> the post-apocalyptical dystopia where teenagers are being oppressed by old people and the teenagers have to overturn the old ruling class.
That is so hyper-specific that it applies to a tiny handful of shows, at most elements of which are indicative of trends. It probably applies to one show this season. There's 157 other things coming out this season according to MyAnimeList.
Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are one of the few movie series that truly have an "epic" feeling of an "saga", a "greater than life" adventure.
Another example for me is the anime Legend Of the Galactic Heroes.
Does anyone know of any good additional articles that explore these topics of what makes for these good "saga" feeling?
> Oh, and check out Legend Of The Galactic Heroes. It's an epic along the lines of Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, with like 30 'main' characters and maybe 300+ named characters throughout its run. Huge in scope and scale, but always willing to take a couple minutes and reflect on philosophy, politics, and the horrors of war. It's a seriously adult show.
Would echo this recommendation. It's a massive commitment to watch fully (even just the main series, not including spinoffs), but it's quite good.
>1.) In general Star Trek isn't really about physics, its about sociology or (in the better episodes) political science.
I've never watched Star Trek, though curiously I know another show set in space about politics, the anime Legend of the Galactic Heroes; it runs about 100 episodes with a few feature films too. If you're interested in politics, specifically in this case the play between a democracy and rule by one person.
It's also rather quaint, the imperial military is styled in a 19th century German style complete with uniforms, and the republic is styled in a modern futuristic style, not without berets though.
It's great fun, but I don't suggest it be discounted because it's an anime, which is a response I have received before.
Bingo. One thing to consider is that many of most praised anime of the 80s were not released for TV, but OVA (Original Video Anime).
This allowed them to do stories and themes that western animations could not touch, because they where expected to be broadcast for kids.
Perhaps the best example could be Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Galactic_Heroes
You are looking at 110 episodes, each 25 minutes long, covering what is effectively a naval war in the stars. But with it you have intrigues of all stripes, and no real good guys.
> As an anime compared to others it stands amongst the best in my opinion.
Well, my opinion may have been tainted by having read the manga first and expecting too much faithfulness to it out of the anime adaptation - a rather common problem. And on the whole, it's definitely one of the better anime in recent years. Unfortunately, there has been a strong trend these days to go for the moé/fanservice crap, likely in an attempt to drive DVD/Bluray sales among the hardcore otaku in the face of declining mainstream viewers and ad revenues. I think I lost my patience somewhere around when Highschool of the Dead came out.
Nowadays I watch a lot more K-dramas, which have rapidly picked up in cinematography and acting over the last few years - they are definitely in a Golden Era right now, and the internet makes it so easy to rapidly obtain them, no matter where you are living. The K-drama fansubbing community is absolutely amazing, and it has been a TON of fun learning Korean through Japanese and seeing the similarities (and differences) between the languages.
But there's so much good anime from back in the day that doesn't get enough attention. Legend of the Galactic Heroes particularly stands out in my mind as a wonderful OVA (though it is quite atypical among OVAs, at 110 episodes). The use of a space opera setting as a backdrop for political commentary was very poignantly done. I've been meaning to read the novels the series is based on, but as science fiction novels are wont to do, they will no doubt be chock full of vocabulary that will probably require me to break out my Japanese-English dictionary.
"Legend of the Galactic Heroes" was produced in a similar fashion as a sprawling 110 episode animated series adapted from a series of novels. People in Japan paid money as a subscription, then got a videocassette in the mail. For a sufficiently rabid fanbase, it is indeed possible.