MovieChat Forums > Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu (1988) Discussion > This anime was a piece of crap

This anime was a piece of crap


After watching the series. The most god awful thing about this series in my opinion is how they keep harping on about how "brilliant" those two opposing commanders were and the fans even commenting on how the battles were "realistic". Despite the tactics and maneuvers they were doing were beyond stupid to anyone with an elementary knowledge of physics.

Here's some examples:

1. In one battle both sides idiotically pilot their whole fleet into a hydrogen gas giant's gravity well, this was suppose to be a good tactical maneuvers even though in real life everyone knows it'll just slow all your fleet movements to a crawl. Then they were surprised someone had the "smarts" to ignite the atmosphere with a bomb.

2. In another battle, one brilliant tactic consist of moving one fleet slowly straight THROUGH the enemy fleet then slowly turning around and firing at them from their "flank". The enemy commander of course let this happen without even firing his weapons when they were in range, because somehow he was convinced "it was all a trick"!! And that he must be CAUTIOUS and WAIT to see what happens!? WTF?

3. In battles the commanders often try to "surround" the enemy as if this was some 2D land battle and not a 3D space battle. Obviously the ships in space have never thought of going "up" or "down" to escape. It doesn't help the tactical displays which the commanders use look like 2D chessboards. Or that they don't even stagger their formation to prevent friendly fire.

The "brilliant" tactics used on the show consists of silly stunts like above and not actual tactics that make sense. Like here is a big space station on the show that's suppose to be to undefeatable. But its static and noone has ever thought of accelerating an asteroid or planetoids towards it with a mass driver. If they can accelerate ships to light speed, don't they realise how much damage objects can do if they're traveling at light speed?? They don't use orbits to slingshot ships, they don't use nebulars or hiding behind planets to stage ambushes, they don't use probes to recon, or take advantage of any special effects of their weapons. Instead most battles consist of charging straight at each other in the amorphous blob formation with their standard pew pew lasers.

Its obvious very little thought into was put into the actual battles or that who ever thought of battles was an complete idiot.

If anyone wants to see what a real space opera with political elements should look like they should check out the Lost Fleet series of novels by
Jack Campbell.

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Alright, this deserves a rebuff.

For starters, the guy who wrote the books the anime was based on was a novelist with a thing for history, not a physicist. He took artistic license, as did the anime's portrayal of the events in the books. Big deal.

The premise for the series as shown on the title card for most of the show is "In every time, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same..."

The implication being that wars continue to be fought on roughly equal technological terms, tactics remain largely two dimensional (except on two or three occasions) due to how difficult it is to organize the ships given the limited communications during battle, and armies fighting each other still intercept each others' messages and jam communications.

Furthermore, in the author's attempt to portray mankind as essentially unchanging, a number of critical (and occasionally very stupid) mistakes are made by even the highest ranking and most competent leaders. S**t happens. Depending on the power structure, sometimes people mutiny or rebel or flat out refuse the orders, but since one of the nations is autocratic and the other is corrupt and driven by a short political cycle, most of the mistakes made by the higher-ups don't get fixed by their underlings because it isn't their responsibility to do so.

These reasons are essentially the source of your main complaints.

For the record: the show does include fleets (and individuals on foot) hiding in wait for ambush and ships using gravitational slingshots, most notably to avoid getting sucked into a black hole. As for neat tricks, how about the way Yang's fleet used asteroids to mask their numbers from a distance, then proceeded to use said asteroids as projectiles in order to distract the bulk of the Imperial forces while most of Yang's fleet (which had been hiding in an asteroid belt) went straight for the emperor's flagship during the Battle of Vermillion? http://gineipaedia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Vermilion

But mostly, I think you're just looking at this from the wrong perspective. This series wasn't written to make sense the way a story does. It was written to seem like a historical record from the future. That means the narrative doesn't have to wrap things up predictably like a normal story, but it also means that you might not get to see all of the things that an ordinary story would promise you. This is a completely different style from a great deal of sci-fi (especially the lack of focus on technology) and of course vastly different from most anime, which is mostly fan-service - including the techno-pron you seem to be missing. You're using a standard sci-fi yardstick to measure it, and LoGH simply isn't a standard sci-fi.

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Me thinks the OP didn't get very far in to the series to really appreciate it's nuisances enough. He's just a simple hater.

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Some of what you say is true. There are alot of incompetent senior military officers in both sides that literally end their own lives and that of their fleet. The Empire improves alot after Reinhardt ascends. The Alliance finally recognizes Yang Wenli but the coup kills of many competent people and then the civilian government appoints people as rewards for loyalty and to dilute the power of the military.

When i spoke to various people with a military background, from intelligence, to soldiers and generals they actually said alot of the incompetence is reality! If that is true it is just we expect fiction to make sense and feel that relying on incompetent characters is weak story telling.

The hydrogen thing was a weak way to show the incompetence of others vs Yang's brilliance.

3D battles do occur by season 2.

Same with some of the tactics u do propose in attacking the fortress. As the war intensifies some of those tricks are used.

So while some of your criticism is justified, some of it is simply because you did not stick with it long enough.

Few animes have this level of thought put into them so if this is unwatchable i have little to watch. It does have faults and i suspend belief like with most storytelling or else nothing is enjoyable.

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