Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Short Synopsis: The plan to bust Fan out of prison begins.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Ah, so no Uranibolg this time, but instead this episode focuses on the Fan vs Zalish storyline. The plan wasn’t the most flawless one, but it definitely had enough interesting points. I personally didn’t like how the long-haired guy whose name I forgot at the moment suddenly turned out to have huge 1337-hax0rs skill that were even capable to hack into a prison, but at the same time this again shows how incredibly bad the security of Tytania is: it’s been so long that they ran into someone with the capabilities to challenge them, so when someone skilled does try to hack their facilities they hardly have any countermeasures installed. The prisons as well: they work because everyone’s scared of Tytania, but in the meantime we see Tom and Dick who have been able to fool the system by making it believe that they are too weak for the gravity system.

In the meantime, the upper governments are also screwed up. Because Estrad was so far removed from the centre of Tytania, they never had much problems with them: it was a small planet in which hardly anything happened, so they usually had nothing to fear from Tytania and just lived their ordinary lives without much conflict. That’s why the president was cocky enough to simply deny Fan Hulic to Zalish, resulting in his entire capital blasted to the ground at the end of the episode.

What’s also good is that this episode showed that Fan’s allies can also accomplish their tasks without the help of Fan: it shows that they’re all a bunch of reliable people, rather than a bunch of people who follow Fan’s orders and hardly do anything for themselves. With six episodes left, the finale is about to begin now. I’m curious to see whether the creators can pull this one off.

Short Synopsis: As it turns out: Idris also has a very annoying brother.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Wha, this episode took me by surprise. This definitely was one of the hardest to understand episodes of this series yet, so I hope that I understood everything correctly. Zalish and Fan were completely absent in this episode, and it only focused on the tension between Idris on one side and Jouslain, Lydia and Baruami on the other side.

So because the rulers of Estrade failed at their coup, Idris takes over their duties and pretty much increases his own influence. Someone needs to take over his old duties and that someone becomes his younger brother: Radomorz. Like Zalish did with Alsas, Idris originally attempted to keep his brother as far away as possible because the guy is a total idiot, and indeed the minute he arrives he starts hitting on Lydia and picks a fight with Baruami. What follows is a very nice (and painful) kick from Lydia, Radomorz insulting Baruami’s father and Baruami hitting Radomorz in the face.

This creates a scandal because Radomorz’ rank is much higher. The original punishment for him was to send him to some far away post in the middle of nowhere, but because of Lydia’s testimony (ZOMG, she actually did something useful!) he simply is removed from his post and sent away to the main planet of Uraniborg.

But damn, Ajman scares me. The guy really is obsessed with Lydia for some strange reason: this is the first time where he spoke his mind so clearly, and he defended her letter with a surprising amount of enthusiasm, especially when he usually just sits in his chair and lets the dukes do the thinking. I know that with these noblepeople age doesn’t matter, but it remains wrong for a guy to start chasing a girl who’s more than forty years younger than him…

Still, I have to admit: that kick of Lydia definitely made up for all those episodes in which she didn’t do anything.

Short Synopsis: Fan gets captured for real this time, and meets two punks with really weird haircuts.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Okay, so next week there’s going to be another hiatus, and after that it’s finally time for this series to get fired off: double episodes until the end of its run! This episode built things up pretty nicely: the bomb is about to go off, and it’s promising to be a really interesting finale.

This episode really showed how Miranda and Fan managed to get so far in the first place: the bad organization of Tytania, and in a way it does make a lot of sense: Tytania is a mighty empire which has had a huge power and influence for centuries, and that’s the thing: when Tytania grew to its power, it would surely have been impossible to defeat it, but through the years, the corruption has increased more and more, and right now we’re at the point where the leaders are too used to being the supreme power: they have an incredible lack of experience in actual battles where they face a threat.

The biggest symbol of this of course is Ajman: the guy is the head of Tytania, but the bugger hasn’t done absolutely anything for himself. He’s just watching from a distance and tells others what to do. He lacks the experience to properly run a country, probably because he’s never had to face any challenges. History has shown the same thing: the only reason why the French revolution succeeded, for example, was because the French royalty at the time consisted out of a bunch of incompetent narcissistic idiots. Alexander The Great in his time conquered more than half of the known world, and yet this empire fell apart completely once he died. All of this is simply due to the lack of quality leadership.

this episode shows this really well: Zalish wants to get his hands on Fan Hulic, but the Estar administration refuses to let the Tytania control them completely, even though they’re part of the Tytanian territory. So of course Zalish rushes in with a city’s worth of soldiers in order to teach Estar a lesson, but this chaos is of course going to be perfect for Fan and the others in order to escape. I must say that I’m impressed: during the first ten episodes or so, I really thought that this series lacked substance, but right now it’s proving to be quite a thought-provoking series.

In fact, It also makes me wonder why all of the evil empires in anime don’t suffer from the same problem: internal strife and crappy organizations. For some reason, 90% of every evil empire (and this usually also goes for the good empires) are functioning like perfectly oiled machines with perhaps only a bunch of incompetent idiots who are tasked with the low-level jobs.

Short Synopsis: Making use of the bad organization of the enemy, Fan lets himself get caught, in order to escape again.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Here’s an interesting one: for February, this show is going to be on and off: in two weeks it’s having yet another hiatus, though in March, it’s going to have double episodes for four consecutive weeks! That’s really got to be the point where this series needs to deliver. It’s been building up so much, so it’d better have a damn good finale! And with a bit of luck Lydia will also actually start DOING something.

It’s a shame that this series is always going to remain in the shadows of Legend of Galactic Heroes. I bet that if the connections with that epic were gone, this series would have been generally better received so far. It’s still a very unique anime to me (I refuse to believe that LoGH was awesome in the same way that this series is).

Fan… the guy remains strange. At first sight he has no big reason whatsoever to go after any other Tytanian than Alsas. There is no “my people are oppressed so I’m just going to bust Tytania to free them”, and neither is he a great moral knight that’s so typical of most of his counterparts in other anime. Now that I think about it, he doesn’t have any huge ideals and this makes this series step away from the moralistic themes that may be a bit too present in anime. For him, it’s just a simple game: he doesn’t care whether he dies or not, he just wants to see how far he can go. It’s rare to find a main character in anime like him. And I think that that’s why I came to like this show so much: aside from perhaps Miranda, every single character here is flawed, and unlike your average perfect character. And in a way, I’d much rather see how far Fan can go with his gamble than the umpth teenager who’s fighting for the power of love.

This episode also showed some surprise background for Miranda, including yet another surprising death. This show really likes to kill of characters at the time you’d least expect it, doesn’t it? ^^; It’s a shame, because the guy was pretty smart, even though this episode showed that he lacks the experience in practical combat. He could have grown into a pretty formidable foe. Though I guess that Miranda realized this as well, so she killed him before he got the chance to prove a threat.

Short Synopsis: Fan’s back and proposes a plan to get his own reward money.
Episode Rating: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
So this episode was quiet, mostly used for comic relief and building up for the next major story arc where Fan is going to face off against Zalish somehow. It’s interesting how this series really puts the emphasis on plans and strategy, rather than concentrating on the low-level details of it.

If I understood correctly, then Fan plans to turn himself in because the planet he’s on lies in a remote region of Tytania. He’s hoping to make use of the bad organization of the place to make his escape once the money is received. In this episode, he basically investigates to find the weaknesses in said security.

On the Tytania-front, I’m surprised that Jouslain still has whathisface as his assistant. After the coup, you’d think that he’d hire somebody else. In the meantime, I was also surprised on how eager Idris was to get his hands on Fan. It sounds like he’s finally got a rock-solid plan in order to get Fan in his custody, though Jouslain is more intent on taking out Zalish, it seems. This could prove to be interesting.

Short Synopsis: Space battles? What space battles?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
This series really is something different. Here we have Fan Hulic, he’s wanted by the entire country of Tytania, he’s just won a big battle against the empire, he’s seen as a hero now even more, so what does he do? He spends an entire episode staying at the house of a little girl and doing silly dances. Don’t get me wrong, this series is awesome, but SO NOT in the way I thought it’d be. XD

Because yeah, the fact remains that this would have been a pretty boring episode otherwise: Fan is depressed over the death of Lyra and sees the light at the end of this episode. It’s really one of these typical episodes that you see everywhere, just like the beach-episode or the “defeat the big bad guy”-finale-episode: they appear so often that they really get predictable and boring unless something special or extraordinary spices it up. In this episode this was Kallen and her strange yet energetic personality. And that mother of hers who doesn’t find it strange for her teenaged daughter to bring a strange man who’s about twice her age home of course. ^^;

And Bertrand! The poor bugger actually survived! The creators of this series really love to bring people back from the dead, only to let them struggle like a fish on dry land for an episode before fileting them for real. In this episode he’s given a final chance to find Fan Hulic, but instead of immediately arresting the guy, Idris commands him to wait things out for a bit longer. This allows Fan to escape before the forces to defeat him can even properly arrive. And that’s saying a lot, since Fan really wasn’t that focused on fleeing this episode.

Oh, and to close off. I don’t often praise this series for its gorgeous visuals, but I do have to say that this episode featured some pretty backgrounds. Could it actually be that the creators saved the biggest part of the budget for this series for the second half? Now that’s a new one.

Short Synopsis: Zalish’s mother goes crazy, Fan meets an old acquaintance again and the Estrads carry out their plans.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
I’m beginning to see what made Legend of Galactic Heroes such a loved anime. These creators are just really good storytellers. They know exactly when and what to build up, and from there they proceed and make everything snowball out of control. What simply started as an innocent plan of Alses to get his hands on Fan is escalating into chaos, which lead to the death of two people, and the arrest of countless, and there doesn’t seem to be an end to the bloodbath yet.

When this series started, I found all the tactical planning pretty lame and dull, but thankfully they were only building up for their second half. There was plenty of juicy character-development in this episode. The always so composed Zalish is starting to crack under the pressure of his brother’s death and his mother’s rages. Jouslan meanwhile shows his true colours: he didn’t simply lack ambition like I originally thought, but he’s much more someone who waits for the right moment in order to for a complete and utter checkmate. He resembles Idris in a way, with the only difference that his patience lasts longer than that of Idris. ^^;

Still, this episode did remove quite a few actors from the main stage when the entire Estrade family and their allies gets rounded up like it’s nothing. I really thought that they’d last longer than that. But at the same time, it’s about time for the creators to reveal the purpose of a certain princess. I mean, she can’t do nothing for much longer, can she?

Short Synopsis: Fan Hulic versus MISTER BUSHIDO!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
I very much doubt that Legend of Galactic Heroes was awesome because of the same reasons, but nevertheless I really can’t deny that Tytania has its own unique charms. I’m not sure exactly where on the way everything went right, but this episode was simply awesome and the characters of this series are so much fun to watch.

Ah, and to think that the creators only kept Alses alive for one measly episode, simply to flesh out the rest of the cast a bit more. I really thought that he’d become some sort of psychopath villain through the series, but in this episode it became apparent that he’s stopped being a threat whatsoever: he descended into a simple psychopathic coward. The only reason why he was involved in a battle was because Fan Hulic wanted revenge for Lyra’s death.

It’s great to see that Idris is now basically dancing on not only the grave of Alses, but also the one of his ambitious subordinate whose name I forgot. In the meantime, I’m also interested in how Zalish is going to deal with his mother, now that her favourite son is dead, and at the same time Jouslan and Ariabart are still happily drinking tea with Lydia. Let’s see how long that’s going to last. ^^;