“Legend of the Galactic Heroes” Week 2

Note: This post contains spoilers for episodes 5-7 of the series.

The former Duke of Castrop enriched himself off of the Empire’s coin, and now his son Maximilian has continued the family tradition. The Imperial leadership has finally had enough, and so they give Marshal Reinhard the task of quelling this rebellion. Reinhard sends Kircheis with a small fleet of 2,000 ships, which raises some chatter among the hierarchy; not only is this a smaller fleet than was recently annihilated by Castrop’s “Artemis Necklace” (a ring of several deadly weapons orbiting the planet), it also seems to be an action meant to position Kircheis for a major promotion. Fezzan, as usual, is playing both sides; their sale of the weaponry to Castrop is meant to maintain a balance, and therefore continue the war indefinitely.

Kircheis manages a strategy to destroy the “necklace” outside of its reach, thus forcing Castrop’s eventual surrender (and Duke Castrop’s personal meltdown). Kircheis receives his promotion, putting him in a place to fulfill Annerose’s request to ensure that Reinhard’s ambitions and immaturity don’t get the best of him.

In the meantime, Yang Wen-Li prepares to do the impossible – take a rag-tag fleet comprised of old men and greenhorns, and capture the Iserlohn Fortress, a terrifying space station situated in the passage between Alliance space and the Empire’s territory. The fortress’s weapon, Thor’s Hammer, has the ability to obliterate thousands of ships at a time. The Alliance has already attempted (and failed) takeovers six times in the past. Luckily, Yang is a gifted tactician with an appetite for peace (and sleep, and good tea), so he’s highly-motivated to make sure the mission is successful and that he can retire afterward.

Yang employs the help of the Rosen Ritters (also known as the Rose Knights), a special forces group known to have betrayed both sides of the conflict at numerous points. Yang’s only means of settling his staff’s apprehensions is to tell them all that he trusts in the Rosen Ritter’s leader, Schönkopf, after having seen him defend a civilian. This is no great comfort, but it leaves an impression on Schönkopf as he prepares to go on a sort of Trojan horse mission to get himself and his men into Iserlohn.

The initial infiltration goes off without a hitch, but it isn’t long until their cover is blown and the station goes into lock-down mode. Yang Wen-Li’s trust holds out as his adversaries make a lot of very poor tactical decisions. It isn’t long before the tables are turned, and Thor’s Hammer is used to send a very clear message to the Imperial forces. After some stubbornness on the part of their leadership, they eventually turn tail and run. Yang Wen-Li is hailed as a hero and gains several levels of respect. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem as though his plans for resignation will become a reality any time soon.

Thoughts: I’m attempting to take on this story in what feel like logical pieces, which is why there’s the odd episode count this week. With the taking of Iserlohn, it seems as if one of the early-stage plot elements has been addressed (though of course the station is still there – I bet the Empire will want to try to take it back).

With this week’s episodes I found myself noticing a lot of the external aesthetic choices. There’s a shift in the image quality after episode 5 that I found a little bit distracting. Whereas the earlier episodes are fairly grainy and have the “look” of older animation, episodes 6 and 7 look like they were either animated at a different time, or have had restoration or clean-up done giving them a more modern, digital look. I don’t necessarily like the change as it feels like some details have been lost in translation (it looks “cheaper” to me if that makes sense). I’ll have to see if this is something that carries through or not.

Within the episodes, I found the costumes of the Castrop elite pretty amusing. They’re clearly modeled after Roman garb, portraying the Count and his cronies as a cartoonishly-authoritarian regime with a bad habit of over-indulgence. Duke Castrop meets his end in a truly Shakespearean manner, being stabbed to death by his oft-abused retainers. Considering the circumstances this was pretty easy to predict and a little bit too on-the-nose for my taste, but it was kind of entertaining.

And Iserlohn Fortress… or should I say, the Death Star? It was pretty obvious that the individual(s) in charge of designing a very threatening man-made space entity were clearly inspired, right down to the way in which its main weapon operates. I suppose I can’t blame them; the idea of a moon-sized metallic death-machine is pretty terrifying.

Though the capture of Iserlohn Fortress is technically a “big deal,” at least as far as I’ve come to believe in the last 7 episodes, these batch of episodes still feel as though they’re really preliminary to whatever face-to-face conflict may happen in the future with our two protagonists. The characters are aware of one-another through rumblings and reputation, and so it stands to reason that they’re likely to meet in a more substantial way as their ambitions change and grow. There’s certainly some joy in learning about them through their separate stories, however. Just when I’m starting to get a little tired of one viewpoint, the perspective switched to the other side and we catch up with those micro-conflicts and fit them into the greater puzzle.

The more I watch, the more I feel a kinship with Yang Wen-Li. His affinity toward sleeping, his love of good food and drink, and his fundamentally peaceful nature all ring very true with my own inclinations. His sense of duty toward his reporting officers is admirable. Even though his nature doesn’t seem suited to war, his longing for peace and his lack of personal ambition really makes him one of the better people to have to wage it. He even offers multiple opportunities for the Empire’s forces to surrender at Iserlohn, even though it would have been simple to blow them out of the sky with the giant space laser now under his control. It’s admirable.

I’m keeping this fairly short this week as I have other things to get to. I’m sure as I watch more episodes these reactions will get more complicated and heated. Thanks for reading!