Wolfgang in the Middle

(Legend of the Galactic Heroes spoilers.)

Wolfgang Mittermeyer seems middle-class. Upper-middle, but still middle, with his moderate house, and his normal marriage to his sweetheart. His closest friend within Reinhard’s comitatus, Reuenthal, is all Gothic aristocrat: heterochromia, candlelit mansions, Norio Wakamoto, the bizarre and unpleasant relationship with Elfriede.

VIII: The Perfect Strategy

I watched Overture to a New War last January. I’m not sure if it was freshly translated back then, or if I just happened to choose that time to watch it. It’s a filled-out and more coherent replacement for the first two episodes of Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

While reviewing some of the Alliance’s officers, Truniht poses Yang a simple question: what is the strategy for certain victory? And Yang says to assemble six times the enemy’s numbers, supply the troops perfectly and ensure the commander’s orders are transmitted without error.

The Legend doesn’t do jokes, or rather doesn’t do funny jokes, but it can be wry when it wants to.

Two Consequentialists

Heigar is one of the Ryvius‘s consequentialists, and certainly the least emotional one. I’m not sure I’ve ever quite grasped his motivation, but perhaps he has a passion for efficiency. As someone who is sometimes too keen to keep things simple (blame Horace), I can sympathise.

Cool Escapes

Unlimited Grace Works

CCY’s first ‘Twelve Days Project’ (which sounds like a doomsday device, if you ask me) was more or less the first thing that happened on this blog, so I’d be foolish not to repeat the exercise for 2008. Why so late starting, though?

Two reasons: firstly, as you may or may not have noticed I’ve been away meditating in a cave behind a waterfall recently, and secondly I bothered to do some research wiki’d, and the apparently the traditional Twelve Days run from Christmas Day to Epiphany. Far be it from me to go against tradition.

Funeral Games

Axe-wielding men in dressy uniforms fighting amid neoclassical columns. Delicious.

A month or so ago I finished Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It was very good. I’m going to stop myself from talking about how good it was. Perhaps Lelangir put it best when he wrote that ‘LoGH killed anime – I seriously doubt anything will be able to compare in the slightest.’ I’d provide a link, but that’s the whole of his post.

Yet I’m tempted to say that it’s not an anime.

Internet Deprivation Diary

So I have an internet connection, of sorts, in my new home now. As suspected, acquiring it was, roughly speaking, as fun as nailing my own arm to a door, and not one of your nice clean, new doors, no, an old one with splinters and woodlice. Still, I’m back earlier than I expected, which is something.

Much of the time covered in this diary was taken up by the inevitable settling-in period before the beginning of the semester proper. (The mills of the academy may grind small, but they start grinding exceedingly slowly!) With little to do, I spent my time reading and watching anime – it was an idyllic, if slothful existence, marked by a sustained failure to watch any more Ideon.

Now Cracks a Noble Heart

Fair warning: this post contains Tsar Bomba-sized spoilers for the eighty-second episode of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and comparatively minor ones for the subsequent episode. If you have any interest in watching it, and you haven’t seen the eighty-second episode, don’t read this.

‘time just endlessly spins’

At first it seems weird that time should spin. We seem to like (in English at least) to describe whatever it is that time does in terms of movement in space, true, but the word that springs to my mind first is ‘flows’.

It is very appropriate that time should spin here, though, for at least two reasons. Firstly this is a Galactic story, and galaxies are prone to spinning. Secondly the Legend‘s most overt message (which opens the episodes of its second season) says that in one important respect time does not progress: ‘the deeds of men remain the same.’ If we’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes then idea that time flows begins to look a bit odd.

To my amusement, I’m reminded of the opening statements of something else I’m fond of.

Snapshots: Fall of the Free Planets

Spoilers ahead for Legend of the Galactic Heroes up to episode fifty-four.

‘Fortress Against Fortress’: Fanboying About LoGH 33 & 34

Julian: GAR & Biggles – In Space!

Legend of the Galactic Heroes‘s opening two episodes of space warfare made it clear how the series’ military confrontations look and broadly function: fleets line up and manoeuvre, space fighters are sent in and beam weapons are fired en masse. Interestingly, because both sides’ spaceships are submarine-shaped, they’re much easier to hit from the side than from head on, so whenever we see a fleet taken in the flank the results are literally explosive.

Given the show’s compelling heroes and the gripping political upheavals, I did not expect much variation on this theme. Writing about the show before I remarked on how gently the spaceships were introduced and established, so I gave up hoping for eye-popping spaceborne action. Trust the Legend, then, to blow me away with a multi-episode battle-stravaganza, only enhanced by the usual liberal helpings of human drama and political machination.