Legend of Galactic Heroes

Watching too many pretty boys

Published on December 22, 2018Leave a comment

This year, I’ve watched too many pretty boys and not all of them were as cute and sweet as this high school boy and his absolute unit of a monster husband.

Jingai-san no Yome: the bride is a boy

That’s from this season’s 3 minute short series Jingai-san no Yome, about high school boys becoming monster brides, which was adorable and cute and had more than a hint of queer subtext. It would be great if all pretty boy series are like that, but boy howdy is that not the case. It might just be my bad luck with them, but pretty boy fujoshi bait and reverse harems (sic) and the like tend to be the most cynical cash grabbing minimal possible effort anime series. Even when compared to the sister fucker shows. When I first started watching seasonal anime I made a point to watch everything, but I soon gave up on anything that looked like a cute boys doing cute things show because they were all so dull and pointless.

Hypocritical maybe considering how many cute girls doing cute things shows I do watch, even when they’re not all that good, But again, I’ve seldom found any that were anywhere near as dull as a very many cute boys series are. It’s not that I like girls more than I like boys, it’s that more effort is put into the later. So many series seem to think it’s enough to just throw a dozen or more archetypes at the viewer with little in the way of plot, character or visuals to make it more interesting. That’s why I stopped watching them, but this year I’ve found half a dozen or so decent ones being broadcast. Shoutout here to the seasonal first impression guides at anime Feminist, which pointed me in the way of a few of those.

Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori: pretty boys bringing soup

So for example, spring season’s Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori might have its complement of pretty boy stereotypes — the short tempered redhead, the big energetic foreign dude, the calm and serious one, the calm and serious one but with glassess — to ship together but it also takes the time to tell actual stories. Working at a traditional sort of Japanese restaurant, these four get involved with the everyday problems of their customers — not all of whom are women — and help solve them, or at least offer a listening ear. It’s all done with a sense of humour and it’s cozy as fuck. If you like iyashikei/healing anime this is a series you’d properly like.

Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi: feeding pretty monsters

Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi also debuted in the spring season and ran for two full cours, a rarity for a pretty boys series. Tsubaki Aoi is a college student raised by her grandfather after her mother abandoned her and like him, she can see ayakashi (traditional Japanese monsters/demons). What she doesn’t know is that her grandfather used her as collatoral for a debt he owned to the Tenjin-ya innkeeper, one of the most respected and feared oni of the Hidden Realm. So one day not long after her grandfather died, she gets kidnapped and taken to the Hidden Realm to marry the innkeeper. All of which is a frustratingly common setup, the normal girl forced into a relationship with an overbearing, arrogant man who she manages to change for the better. A bit dodgy, but once moved past this setup the series is actually quite fun, with Aoi using her cooking talents and quick wit to get herself and her new demon friends out of all sorts of dangers. If you like scenes of cute, fluffy monsters eating food and smart, compassionate heroines this is a good series to try.

Legend of Galactic Heroes: pretty boy fascists

Of course for the prettiest of pretty boys, the ones who put the fashionable into fascism, you have to go to the Legend of the Galactic Heroes reboot, which upgraded both the space battles and the protagonists looks 1000% from the original while keeping the slightly fascist ideology intact. At the very least it got me off my ass and watch the original. The reboot hasn’t quite reached its legendary density yet, but then it’s early days. Hopefully the sequel will not take too long to arrive.

Gakuen Babysitters: merry Christmas

Other noticable pretty boys anime this year were Devils Line, a vamperic mopefest that still held my attention to the end despite its drab colours and animation. There was also Gakuen Babysitters which fell squarely in the cute boys doing cute things camp, in this case baby sitting. This was actually one of the series I was looking forward to because the manga was adorable and luckily the series didn’t disappoint. Ryuuichi and his young brother Kotarou are so sweet together, the other babies are all cute but cutest of all is the tsundere chairwoman who took the two in after their parents died in a plane crash. It’s a good, fluffy series because it has this core of seriousness, of tragedy at its heart. And that’s the common thread with all these series: they have something more than just pretty boys interacting or flirting with each other.

This is the ninth post in this year’s twelve days of anime challenge. Tomorrow: Watching too much slice of moe.

Legend of Galactic Heroes: a familiar fascism

Published on July 2, 20185 Comments

James Morgan, in a comment to my first post on Legend of the Galactic Heroes puts it bluntly:

Unfortunately, Legend of the Galactic Heroes is also inherently, legitimately fascist in it’s beliefs as it total buys in into the Great Man Theory of History with and in the end, sides far more with absolute monarchy over democracy so long as the monarch is enlightened and meritocratic in his ruling. (coughReinhardcough) Any principled Leftist knows what pack of lies that is. So nuanced and balanced in it’s views, it is not and I think it deserves to be called out as such.

He’s right. Legend of the Galactic Heroes is pretty fascist in its assumptions and in the story it wants to tell. It’s a familiar sort of fascism, one that can be found in an unbroken line in science fiction, from David Weber and Tom Kratman Via Tom Clancy back to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle by way of Heinlein all the way back to E. E. “Doc” Smith and his “genocide is the solution to all conflict” space operas. But at least this time, and unlike Pournelle, the Nika riots inspired sports stadium massacre here is done by the unambiguous bad guys rather than the result of Our Heroes Making Tough Choices.

Episode forty tells the origin and history of the Galactic Empire under the pretext of having Julian, admiral Yang’s protege watching a documentary about it. This documentary, supposedly critical of the Empire, has problematic assumptions of its own, mostly the idea that democracy can easily descend in mob rule and there is such a thing as a decadent society, both of course common right wing assumptions shared by the Heinlein/Niven/Pournelle school of American sf writers. Rudolf von Goldenbaum, the founder of the Galactic Empire, is treated as a man who had the right idea but went too far, who was able to crush the criminal and “decadent” elements of society and restore vitality, but who then regrettably went full nazi by wanting to rid humanity of all undesirables, leading to the murder of some four billion “inferiors” and political enemies.

For the modern day Empire as shown in the series, this is all ancient history, with such excesses long since curbed in favour of a much more old fashioned century sort of government, an absolute monarch ruling through a class of aristocratic warriors, with the large mass of humanity leading relatively prosperous but limited lives on his sufferance. Technology, architecture, fashion and everything but the huge space battleships is 19th century at best, with horse and wagon as valid a transportation choice as it was back then. Again, an absolute monarchy ruling the stars and for which the unification of all of humanity is the prime concerned, modelled after 19th century examples but with much less democracy, is not uncommon in rightwing space opera of the same era as the original Legend of the Galactic Heroes novels. Heinlein had the Oranjes rule the Solar System in Double Star in a relatively benign example as far back as 1956.

Despite cast as the villain in the story, the Empire, and its admirals, Reinhard foremost among them, are shown with sympathy. We are supposed to emphasise with them. Reinhard especially is easy to like, with his desire to free his sister from the clutches of a corrupt emperor, morphing into the will to take power and reform the rotten system from within. His best friend Siegfried too is extremely likeable in his loyalty and desire to be the filling in a Lohengram sandwich. So too most of the imperial brass shown in the series, either doing a difficult job for the sake of their country, despite its flaws, later in support of Reinhard’s vision of an united mankind. Even von Oberstein, the technocratic spymaster is treated with sympathy, noting that his lack of natural eyes would’ve marked him for death in Rudolf’s time. That idea of soldiers, of officers as noble and loyal to a country that may not deserve it, is one we find in e.g. Tom Clancy’s World War III technothrillers as well, and ultimately something that comes from the Cold War necessity of rehabilitating Nazi Wehrmacht and Waffen SS commanders to be able to use their expertice agains the new enemey, the Soviets.

Ultimately Reinhard offers the same vision as Rudolf Goldenbaum did, a rejuvenated, re-energised empire where absolute power is still in the hands of one man, a man who still believes in the same social Darwinism as Goldenbaum did. Reinhard makes no plans for his succession, but challenges those who think they’re worthy enough to come and overthrow him. The structure of the Empire is sound, it just needed the right man at the helm: there’s no need for real democratisation or freedom, just for less corruption.

In contrast to the empire there’s the Free Planets Alliance, a democratic republic, but one which has succumbed to mob rule, with its politicians only interested in sustaining their own power, thinking nothing of sacrificing millions of soldiers in doomed campaigns just to win elections. It’s a deeply cynical view of democracy and once again, one shared with a great many rightwing American science fiction writers. The Alliance’s politicians are corrupt, while its military leaders are idiots, falling for the simplest of ruses, continually overpowered by Reinhard and his admirals, with the exception of Yang Wenli, the closest thing the series has to a real hero. He’s an archetypical mil-sf character, forced to become a soldier out of economic necessity, who hates warfare but who is surprisingly good at it nonetheless. It is he who almost singlehandly almost manages to save the republic, despite the best efforts of its politicians and military leaders alike to lead it to ruin. There are several times where you as a viewer wishes he would take Reinhard & Rudolf’s example and launch a coup to take over the republic in order to save it, but he never does.

Now it is true that the series is more complex and nuanced than it’s sketched above and no more so than in the person of Jessica, the widow of one of Yang’s friends, who in the third episode, at a ceremony honouring those fallen in the battle in which she lost her fiancé throws the hollow patriotism of the minister of defence back at him. One of a rare few female characters with an important role in the series, she becomes an anti-war politician, who ends up leading the resistance against the military coup that has overthrown the government and who is killed during the above mentioned stadium massacre. Whereas Pournelle had a similar massacre as a regrettable necessity, Legend of the Galactic Heroes at least has it as a tragedy, a crime. That puts it above ninety percent of American military science fiction…

Despite this, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, by keeping its focus squarely on Reinhard and Yang as the great men deciding the destinies of their respective countries, by its presentation of democracy as inherently weak and corrupt, its glorification of warfare as the best or even only solution for political differences is a fascist sympathetic story, of a kind that’s rife in science fiction. This does not take away from its accomplishments as a story, but you have to be careful to look beyond its delicious shipping opportunities to what it is trying to sell you on.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: shipping wars

Published on May 30, 2018Leave a comment

Forget the politics, the wars, all that crap. The most important question you have to ask yourself about Legend of the Galactic Heroes is: am I team Ketchup-Mustard or team for gods sake Yang, sit in a chair like a regular human being?

LOGH: shipping wars

In a series with only half a dozen or so female roles but with lots and lots of delectable young men in uniform making bedroom eyes at each other, there’s a lot of gay potential. Not that any of it is actualised of course, this being a Serious Space Opera, but that has never stopped shippers. And honestly, it’s so obvious that Kircheis and Reinhard are attracted to each other, that the only real question is whether Kircheis is only in love with Reinhard, or would like to be the jam filling in a Lohengramm sandwich of Reinhard and his sister…

Yang Wenli does get a heterosexual romance later in the series, but it doesn’t have half the sexual tension that any given pair of strapping admirals has with each other.

In modern anime, there are plenty of series aimed at socalled fujoshi, female fans of boys love stories, but I wonder if some of the success and longevity of Legend of the Galactic Heroes can also be due to them…

Legend of Galactic Heroes: tell, don’t show

Published on May 29, 20181 Comment

Even if its opening every time reminds me of certain theme song to a magical mannequin movie, I have to be grateful to Legend Of The Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, if only because it got me off my butt and watching the original series, which I’m currently twothirds through.

Legend Of The Galactic Heroes has a reputation for being difficult, unforgiven even: its first episode drops you almoat straight into a huge space battle while only understanding the barest outline of who is fighting who. And instead of exciting ship to ship combat, it’s mostly serious senior officers staring at electronic maps with the thousands of ships involved reduced to small blips. Seemingly dozens of characters — all men, all in uniform– are introduced and you need to keep your wits about you to follow what’s happening. It sets the pattern for the rest of the series.

Let’s stop a moment to admire just how big an accomplishment Legend Of The Galactic Heroes is. A story that took ten novels to tell was adapted in 110 episodes, one continuous story taking almost a decade, from late 1988 to 1997 to be completed, released not as a television series, but as original video animations for the home video market, on VHS. When it started the Japanese bubble economy was in full swing, when it was finished, it had survived the crash that followed it. And that for a series that relied on none of the traditional selling points of other anime OVA series. No sex, no fanservice, no glamourised violence, just blips on radar screens being extinguished with the occassional reminder of the brutal deaths that accompany it.

Legend Of The Galactic Heroes is a masterpiece of tell, not show. Much of the action consists of various men holding meetings in which they explain the geopolitical and military situation to each other, followed by more meetings determining strategy and tactics for the latest battle. When there are no meetings, the narrator returns, to explain what’s happening. Several times the entire story is interrupted in favour of our heroes watching video documentaries about the rise of the empire or the fall of Earth. There’s a lot of information to ingest, at times it can get a bit dry. Nevertheless, it’s fascinating. There’s a density there, a complexity that you can only get by not being afraid to tell, rather than show.

In many ways, it’s the anti-Weber. David Weber’s Honor Harrington series of space opera has a similar grandiose sweep of history as LOGH, but its politics are barely sketched out while its battles have the flight path of every missile described in loving detail. Legend Of The Galactic Heroes on the other hand goes in depth on the geopolitics, but couldn’t be bothered much with battle scenes. It’s enough to know that the 20,000 of the Galactic Empire are surprisingly defeated by the 13,000 of the Alliance of Free Planets, thanks to an brilliant tactic insight from Yang Wenli.

Watching Legend Of The Galactic Heroes therefore demands concentration. This isn’t a series you can just watch in the background while checking Twitter. Especially if you have to read the subtitles to follow the conversations. I notice that while I can easily marathon a regular anime series 10-20 episodes a day if I got the time, my concentration lapses after only a few episodes. LOGH is hard work, but it’s worth it.

Especially the shipping.