The problem I have with this anime is that; on the one hand it seemed to focus on making its war story as realistic as possible, like a documentary in a way which makes it less exciting to watch and on the other hand, it is not an accurate representation of a war, which is the reason I couldn’t really take it any seriously.
I dropped this anime after watching 70 episodes since it takes forever to finish (ok for some people 110 episodes might not be so much) and I couldn’t endure this show any longer. I thought a break would help… Well it made me even less interested in going into it again.
-Story and characters
So what do I mean when I say they focused on making this war story as realistic as possible? Well the show spends a lot of time introducing new side characters, who are either military officials or politicians. A warstory can basically be presented through the eyes of the soldiers on the battle field, through the eyes of the civilians going through food shortages and suffering at home or through the military officials and politicians making the decisions. LotgH surely is the latter. The show doesn’t really establish any emotional connection with any of these characters. They are mostly standing around and talking about this war or something that is connected to it, kind of like a war documentary.
Let’s start by looking at the imperial side: Every character there seems like a typical military officer, an empty shell just there to take and give orders. Even one of the two main characters, Reinhard doesn’t really stick out of the crowd too much, except that his outfit is a bit fancier. The show later tries to make him more relatable with him having inner monologues, which was a nice effort but sadly a bit too late. They have a few characters who feel like they have some sort of plan and will get interesting at some point but that also happens too slowly.
Then we have the republic side. Here we have 2 character who somewhat stick out of the majority, Yung Wenli, the idealistic young strategist and Julian the kid who follows him around. Now my personal problem with Wenli, which also affects Julian is his never ending speeches about democracy. I heard that people like this show because they think it is “gray” in its depiction. So it isn’t “good vs evil” like many other shows but rather 2 sides which both have their reasons. But Wenli is a contradiction to that. You have an obvious attempt of the author to favor the republic side in a moral manner since the show never brings up arguments for the imperial side. It only tells you how awesome democracy is. This is basically the personality of Wenli, he loves democracy and hates to kill people, which doesn’t prevent him from becoming a commander in war ordering the death of millions. But according to him the death of all the people is always the wars fault, not his, not anyone else of the commanders, but always war. The lack of self-awareness this guy has is astonishing. There are even cases where he orders to destroy millions of ships, possibly carrying billions of people with a recently captured super canon, because their commander didn’t want to retread. Firing a warning shot or only destroying a quarter of their fleet didn’t even occur to him, he just killed them all, without really thinking about all the option he got. Yeah… it’s all wars fault.
I think Wenli as a character is pretty shallow as well, yeah he gives his speeches but there isn’t really anything more to his character. He seems to lack any relatable emotion as well. He is in his constant Wenli phase, which is a combination of mild happiness, mild concern and mild sadness.
The show covers a lot of side details and backstories of characters, but for a reason unknown to me they never mentioned how and where the 2 main characters, Wenli from the republic and Reinhard from the imperials, became such good strategist. That was another reason why I couldn’t relate to them, because I didn't know them. Reinhard had a little bit of a backstory, but that only revolved around his relationship with his sister and I don’t really see his motivation he gets from that throughout the show.
Now let’s talk about why I think the war in this anime wasn’t really well done. First of all the battle are very dry. The battle scenes focused rather on showing you the back and forth of the command of each side, giving orders and then you see some ships shooting at other ships, some ships explode and one side wins. The show constantly praises the main character for being such good strategist, but the audience can’t really experience that by its own. We don’t really have an idea how the battle is set up, what the numbers and the position of the ships are and all the other factors that play key role in the outcome of a battle. It would have been nice if they presented it more like a real documentary, or a game of chess. You get to know the set up and maybe get time to think for yourself how you would win a battle and then see how the geniuses of history made it. Of course are the writers of the show no genius strategic, I don’t expect them to be, but if you have some sort of interest in actual battles you can include some tactics here and there that reminds one of history. But little is seen in this anime. You don’t SEE any kind of great tactics in this ainime, you just see some people shouting some commands, ships explode and then you are told how great of a strategist this one guy is. That’s why the characters don’t feel like geniuses to me. They never show that they are smart in solving a problem. Well there are a few cases where you see some strategy. One case, which I want to analyze a little bit more is the time when Wenli puts half his fleet in an asteroid field to trick his enemies to think its the whole fleet, while outflanking them at the same time. Now I got a few problems with this tactic, first off, why do the sensors of the imperial side only track the number of objects, not the shape or any other important information to distinguish astroids from ships? In space without any pollution that hinders visibility that information can basically be gotten by looking though a binocular. So the writers completely ignored that possibilty and didnt really give a reason why the imperial side should think the astroids are ships as well, so its already pretty stupid from the start. This is a common example of using a thing that maybe works on earth in the past (where battles are fought in fog and so), but which would completely fail in the future in space, which the show is full of. You could say that they used some sort of invisibility (which was never said in the anime) but then again, how can he track down their numbers?
And what would putting your fleet inside an asteroid fleet accomplish?
1. Your ships getting randomly hit by asteroids (unless you can control them ALL, which the show didn’t manage to explain how)
2. By asteroids getting blown up next to you and shattered they would also disable your vision or crucial points of your ship may be hit by asteroid parts.
I think this tactic gives more disadvantages than advantages. Anyways, they used the asteroids to quickly hide behind them when they are being fired at by LASER guns, it’s not like these shots travel with light speed or something. The amount of face palms that scene gave me is indescribable. So this should illustrate that in the few cases the show actually shows some tactitcs, they are quite mind-boggeling and not in a good way.
I think that the writers are way more inspired by medieval war, with horse formations and these sorts of things than recent wars, which in my opinion would give a better idea of how war would be fought in space in the future. They also use battle axes and crossbows some times and carry their orders out with good old white paper. It just shows that the script is not well thought through.
And to be honest I think the battles are not really creative as well. In real war you have lots of different tools and weapons that can give you tactical advantages. Artillery, tanks, airplanes, ships, submarines, mines, spies and a whole lot of other things. In LotgH they basically ALL use the same ships, since it is never said that either side has better ships, which all use the same kind of laser to shoot at each other. There are a few rare anomalies but the show is 110 episodes long, so those don’t justify the laziness. They could have used different ship types, which would have made the battles more interesting, some kind of blockades of supply lines or so many other things. They used a black hole once In their battles which I found to be a nice idea but that’s basically it. There was even one scene where they could have used this giant defense canon I previously mentioned, but instead retreaded from it, because they thought that the enemies can’t use it in their attacks anyways (one of the many great plans of Wenli). They maybe can’t use the canon but they surely can use the planet as a defense line themselves and as a station to operate from and to get reinforcement themselves. This, for example is one of many moments when I questioned the capability of the strategists in this show.
I also find this anime to be highly unrealistic. In the already mentioned occupation of this defense canon, apparently not a single one of the republic side dies, which they made a big deal about, well I would too if something so improbable would happen. Such a thing is so far attached from reality that I highly doubt the writers ever opened a history book and rather got their inspiration from TV shows about historic events. I mean even when Nazi Germany marched through Belgium to get to France, a couple of German soldiers died, that’s just normal in a war. Another unrealistic thing about LotgH is that it seems without the main characters either side would be pretty much screwed. War is not decided by one smart guy who is just better than everyone else, it’s a combined effort where many very smart people put their minds together. This idea that one guy is such a good strategist and everyone else is just a pleb that stands no chance is such a typical anime trope. And people kinda make this anime out to be more than just a typical anime.
Visuals-
The show looks great. It got nice detailed drawings of futuristic ships which were surely great for their time. Ofc they could have made better, but it’s a 110 episode long ova afterall. You will get used to the characterdesign, which looks nice as well. Animation isn’t that great. The show most of the time consist of limited animated standing scenes with flappingmouths.
Soundtrack-
LotgH mainly uses calm orchestra music with many long notes. I didn’t like the soundtrack that much. I found the battle music to be out of place which made the battles less exiting. They could have used more fitting classical music for the battles. It may be overused but something like “Ride of the Valkyries” from Richard Wagner would fit into these scenes.
Overall
I gave this anime such a low score since I couldn’t finish it.(and for the record: I was watching with twice the normal speed after episode 20, so I tried my best) A show which can’t keep my interests, even though I try to watch through it fails the most and deserves the lowest score possible. There are surely some nice aspects around the show, and maybe you will find some of those so interesting that you will like this anime, but for me they weren’t enough to endure this one. Overall I can just repeat myself: This show was boring for focusing so hard on the characters and their relations in this war but failing to make this war engaging or the characters relatable and interesting. That’s the main problem and when you think about it, it shreds apart everything this show is about.
