(CR) Legend of the Galactic Heroes remake

[pervypig]

Originally Posted by DragoonKain3

I'm pretty sure it's a relic of real life plane dogfighting. If their thrusters aren't symmetric (as in their forward thrusters are MUCH stronger than their reverse/side thrusters), then this is probably the most realistic part of the show since there's no friction in space.

You know, that dumbass formation kinda reminded me of horse archers in Mount & Blade, and yeah, it really is DUMB.

[Gan_HOPE326]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

It wouldn't be like that either. No stealth in space, as you pointed out. Barring some FTL component, I suspect realistic space fights would be about both sides spending inordinate amounts of effort just to get within firing range of each other.

I can think a few potential "stealthy" techniques in space, but they would hardly have many equivalents in other forms of combat. Random ideas, considering that I'd expect most battles to take place inside a star system:

1. accelerating to speed while very far away, or even just drop into the system at 80% of lightspeed after having accelerated months before in order not to be seen; this would require amazing precision of course, allows for a very short fire window, and can't be used in battles, more like hit-and-run orbital bombardments
2. accelerate in the shadow of a planet or moon, using gravity from other bodies to fling yourself around and hit the enemy from an unexpected angle
3. accelerate while putting yourself in between the enemy and a close star, thus letting the radiation behind you mask your own exhaust as noise

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Gan_HOPE326

I can think a few potential "stealthy" techniques in space, but they would hardly have many equivalents in other forms of combat. Random ideas, considering that I'd expect most battles to take place inside a star system:

1. accelerating to speed while very far away, or even just drop into the system at 80% of lightspeed after having accelerated months before in order not to be seen; this would require amazing precision of course, allows for a very short fire window, and can't be used in battles, more like hit-and-run orbital bombardments
2. accelerate in the shadow of a planet or moon, using gravity from other bodies to fling yourself around and hit the enemy from an unexpected angle
3. accelerate while putting yourself in between the enemy and a close star, thus letting the radiation behind you mask your own exhaust as noise

1. Bit of a problem accelerating to that speed. Though if you can do it, I suppose you can just throw rocks at any inconvenient planet. Not sure how well that would work on ships. Or how long they'd have to see you coming.
2. How do you get in the shadow, and how close to the planet does the enemy have to be for your position around that planet to matter?
3. Getting the sun in your back's actually a valid aerial combat tactic (or at least, it was). I don't know how rare the occurrence of such an alignment (star-you-the enemy) would be, or how useful against the sensors of a space faring civilization.

[Pen3]

Do you find the space battles in Mugen no Ryvius boring?

[Eater of All]

I see a couple of comments about pacing, but I personally enjoy the pacing so far. The original OVA also took 2 episodes to animate the Battle of Astarte. Certainly the new LoGH won't finish the series at the rate that it's going, but that's fine - I'd rather see what it can get through being done well than to see it get rushed to oblivion. Who knows, the pacing may also pick up after this.

Assuming I haven't missed some news about what will be covered in this 1-cour + 1-cour worth of movies, the only question is whether this pacing will let them get to a good stopping point, and if anime-only viewers in 2018 can stomach such pacing.

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Unless they were arrogant enough to order their sensors turned off, that's not enough to explain what happened.

They didn't need to know exactly where the Imperials were. They just needed to know they'd accelerated in an unexpected way.

And again, my problem isn't that the Allies were blind. It's that they were blind, while the Imperials weren't. And that the series tried to sell it as Reinhard being a genius.


It wouldn't be like that either. No stealth in space, as you pointed out. Barring some FTL component, I suspect realistic space fights would be about both sides spending inordinate amounts of effort just to get within firing range of each other.

And submarine fight may not be fast paced, but it's tense!

But really, my complaint isn't about realism. I wouldn't mind if space fights were like antique marine fights and they had to ram and/or board each other to fight it out with swords and axes. It's about consistency. I want both sides to have similar capabilities (or, if there's a disparity, I want them to show it unambiguously) and both sides to use those capabilities with a minimum of competence. Some stupidity is fine, even at the highest levels, but there are limits.

Going out on a limb, I don't think the imperials have constant vision of the FPA fleets either. Reinhard just happens to be able to predict the enemy fleet trajectories really well. Although that relies on the assumption that, for some unknown reason, it seems to take significant effort (i.e. time, on the order of possibly hours?) to determine the position of the opposing fleet once, and not be able to track them continuously after that.

[Top Sergeant]

I am enjoying a lot of the aspects of the show regarding the fleets (data nets, etc) but after two episodes just about all we've seen of the main antagonists is them standing around looking calm and cryptic. I'm hoping for a little more life in these guys soon.

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by Top Sergeant

I am enjoying a lot of the aspects of the show regarding the fleets (data nets, etc) but after two episodes just about all we've seen of the main antagonists is them standing around looking calm and cryptic. I'm hoping for a little more life in these guys soon.

Who are you calling the antagonists? All we've seen are two different sides fighting.

[4th Dimension]

Yeeeah. As presented in the new show Reinhard's victory wasn't so much a stroke of brilliance but terminal stupidity by the Republicans (or is it the Alliance? I forget).

First off about the sensors and such. Given one throwaway comment that the scouts have lost the Imperial fleet I'm assuming that it's not so much that there is stealth in space as it is that everyone's sensors suck, and you pretty much can only see what you can shoot, as evidenced by the fact that the Imperials are only spotted once both sides are within basically gun range.

As such it seems fleets rely on screens of scout ships to keep track of the enemy fleets and relay their movements back to the command. So any plot seen in the show, unless it's a plot of a current engagement, where combatants can see each other[1], is probably based on last reported course and heading of the enemy.

So what happened is that Reinhard was able to SOMEHOW give the Alliance scouts the slip, probably by not being where he was. Now this normally should not happen. But let's for the sake of moving on say that this was part him part brilliant action of Imperial counter scouts or something. In any case he did not maintain the course and heading expected of him and was somehow able to use that to get a jump on the central fleet.

The main problem with this is that it should have been one of the possible contingencies what if the enemy jumps one of our separate forces alone. Also the formation as shown in the new show should really have been closing in as they are getting closer to the enemy so they can fall simultaneously from three sides on the enemy. This should have made it impossible for the enemy to just jump one of them without other two fleets "marching to the sound of gunfire" and falling on them from the sides. But the show also gave R ability to jam the enemy long range comms/C&C ability somehow, so let's say that prevented the word getting out.

It still doesn't really make his actions strokes of genius, but more abusing the gross overconfidence of the enemy, whose plan could have really only worked if the enemy stayed on the defensive and waited for them to close in to destroy them.

If we accept the above limitation in keeping tabs on the enemy, the ambush of the left flank also makes sense, since R predicted where they might be given that he roughly knew when the courier left the center to summon reinforcements. The murky bit is the whole finishing off the center and what did that entail. Just destroying crippled ships or finishing off remaints of the center that lost cohesion. Because if it's the later, I wonder where these ships were for the rest of the engagement.

The bit that really I didn't get[3] is Wei's plan to link left and right together. It seemed strange to me to suggest left and right linking up somewhere else, if the enemy is savaging the center. He would kinda be between them and if he kept track of their movement he could still pounce at either.

But then I watched the two original episodes and things made more sense. There the Alliance did not advance in three fleets in a line abreast. There the fleets were coming from ALL sides, roughly 120 degrees apart. This made it even more believable that R could simply jump the gun and rush one of them, and not be where they would expect him to be. But it also made more sense for Wei to suggest two fleets coming from rear left and rear right to link up, because they would both be behind Reinhard.

I'm not entirely sure why did they change the formations compared to the original? It's still not entirely a good plan on the Allied side, but eh.

The main thing I'm probably miffed about here is that even with there advantages, R shouldn't have been wining as decisively as seemingly shown, where only Allied ships explode and Imperials seemingly suffer NO losses before the silly chasey chasey kissy kissy formation. Even with the numbers and C&C out, that's a lot of ships fighting, she should have been shown loosing SOME ships at least.

Finally, these first two episodes seem to roughly coincide with the original two episodes. The original had a bunch more world building bits that weren't necessarily needed for the understanding of the battle, and they weren't really split between Wei and Reinhard episodes.
That being said it seems they aren't going to be just updating the show episode by episode since while I haven't watched the episode 3 of the original show, I skimmed through it, and it showed Alliance side shenanigans not the Imperial side in this show. Given that the next episode seems to be Allied one, it seems they might be trying to have episodes alternate the focus constantly. First one was an Imperial, second one was Allied, third Imperial, fourth Allied and so on?

In any case despite the misgivings, I'm quite enjoying this so far, since it's been TOO LONG since I have seen something Sci-Fi that wasn't a shone in a huge mech with a sword screaming half an episode.

[1] Yeah I know, in any realistic depiction of space engagement, unless the enemy has something fancy and almost physics breaking[2] any fleet in system would know all movements of any other fleet in system (with a light delay).
[2] Or is detecting enemies using something other than radiation, like they use gravwaves in Honorverse.
[3] Well at first I assumed everyone had up to date info about enemy fleet and positions and as such I was confused why the Alliance commanders weren't closing in their formation as the enemy got closer and allowed to be caught with such a wide formation. Well the real answer is that the battle was based on the original one, where the Alliance did not use this formation.

[kuromitsu]

I don't really care about strategy (I mean, space battles... *shrug* the show is going for a coolness factor there) but I do care about how they're messing up Reinhard.

What's wrong with this Reinhard? Seriously, this is like Reinhard's evil twin who is totally chill, fairly mature, and was never a problem child at all. They're making it seem like he's a kind of hero of justice who rebelled against the unfair system from a young age... except with Reinhard that was always kind of just a byproduct of a constantly simmering anger and dissatisfaction stemming from his background, all the pain and humiliation he went through in his childhood. Sure, he did grow to care about the system being rotten to the core, but he didn't start out like that, and even later on he always priorized his individual sense of "justice" and "right". Why aren't they showing this? Especially as they had Annerose pointing out how Kircheis is effectively keeping Reinhard in check by having a tempering effect on him, but so far we haven't seen any of that actually happen because this Reinhard is just so chill and noble and has himself all together.

(Thinking about it, they totally cut Annerose's warning that the day Reinhard stops listening to Kircheis will be his end. Whyyyyy.)

And on the Oberstein end of things, Suwabe Junichi is trying to do a Shiozawa Kaneto impression, and unsurprisingly he sounds terrible. :/ That seriously hurt to listen to. Partly because trying to emulate Shiozawa Kaneto is like... why would someone even try? That's like trying to emulate Wakamoto Norio. And partly because why can't they just do their own damn thing and give this Oberstein his own voice and style? I seriously don't understand this show.

On the plus side, though, Kircheis sounded a lot better in this episode than before. Still with an edge, but more Kircheis-like. I think he's going to be fine.

[RDNexus]

Dear goodness, can you chill out a little?
This isn't the line-by-line adaptation of old, so there's stuff here and there bound to be cut.
And still, they seem to be taking their sweet time. Are they really hellbent on giving this version a long-time adaption as well?

[kuromitsu]

Cuts are fine. Streamlining is (would be) fine. Getting creative is (would be) awesome. Not "getting" the main character is not fine. Reinhard is a great character but he's great because he's a complex person with significant flaws. If you take that away from him and try to whitewash him, he ceases to be an interesting character. Not to mention it upsets his dynamics with other characters (namely Kircheis and Oberstein).

[RDNexus]

They may get to it later on, be a little patient, ok?

[kuromitsu]

We just had the parts that set up these characters, flashbacks included, but hey, sure, they might just revisit the exact same plot points to add details they didn't add now...

[Kanon]

I enjoyed that the beginning of the episode gave us some backstory on the Empire and FPA's creation, even if it was very heavily trimmed. Gave us some context. In the original, we had to wait 50 or so episodes to learn any of that stuff, but they went over it in details as a trade-off (2 whole episodes).

Yep, they're screwing up Reinhard's character. The only part that felt right was showing him seething with rage after learning his sister was to be taken away, but it would have been better if they had properly established just how much his sister means to him beforehand. The Kircheis x Annerose scenes were good though.

I still think they can fix Reinhard though, and in fact need to for his friendship with Kircheis to be meaningful.

[bakato]

Cadets get to practice with laser rifles? I'm sold.

[AntonKutovoi]

I agree, however, about Suwabe being pretty bad as Oberstein. There are voice actors, who can sound like Kaneto Shiozawa, like Hideyuki Tanaka among veterans, or Tomohisa Hashizume among new voice actors, but Suwabe, sadly, just sounds very flat, like he is really struggling with the role, to the point that it reminded me of that scene in English from Subete ga F ni naru. Not to mention that there's no point in imitating someone's voice acting, unless you're a direct replacement...

[kuromitsu]

Originally Posted by Kanon

I still think they can fix Reinhard though, and in fact need to for his friendship with Kircheis to be meaningful.

I very much hope, although going by what we've seen until now I'm very sceptical. I hope I'm wrong but I have a feeling that they're going to present Oberstein as "corrupting" Reinhard (which would be immensely stupid and wrong on all levels...).

Originally Posted by AntonKutovoi

I agree, however, about Suwabe being pretty bad as Oberstein. There are voice actors, who can sound like Kaneto Shiozawa, like Hideyuki Tanaka among veterans, or Tomohisa Hashizume among new voice actors, but Suwabe, sadly, just sounds very flat, like he is really struggling with the role, to the point that it reminded me of that scene in English from Subete ga F ni naru. Not to mention that there's no point in imitating someone's voice acting, unless you're a direct replacement...

The whole idea to imitate Shiozawa as Oberstein is just so utterly misguided and stupid. For one, it's Shiozawa Kaneto, I mean really? It feels kind of disrespectful, but mainly completely pointless because you aren't Shiozawa and Oberstein isn't Shiozawa either, so why not just do your own take on the character instead of slavishly trying to emulate someone else's acting? (Especially if you're going to suck at it.) Just sit down and figure out who this guy is and what makes him tick, that's what you do as an actor, no? Why they went with Suwabe Junichi for Oberstein, I'll never understand. He's just so completely wrong for the role...

[pervypig]

Holley shat - "Reinhard, please make the universe your own"

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by 4th Dimension

In any case despite the misgivings, I'm quite enjoying this so far, since it's been TOO LONG since I have seen something Sci-Fi that wasn't a shonen in a huge mech with a sword screaming half an episode.

Too long? You aren't following the current Space Battleship Yamato?

[4th Dimension]

No. That sounds to me as something faar too long and faar too pulpy for me to get into at this point.